Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce, The Shape of Words, a solo exhibition of new works by gallery artist Simeen Farhat. This is Farhat’s third solo exhibition with Cris Worley. The exhibition will run November 20 – January 31 with an opening reception with the artist in attendance Saturday, November 20th from 5-8pm.
For more than a decade, language has lain at the heart of Simeen Farhat’s work. Her inspiration first began with the prophetic words of poets of various Arabic languages. Later, she adopted the alphabet of Germanic and Romance languages, including English, and the subject matter moved from the profound to the seemingly mundane as text messages with quick quips became a standard mode of communication. In all instances, the words used to comprise her sculptural work are stylized and reformed in a way to no longer be legible, with only an occasional clue made visible through a more obvious representation of a word.
Though her work is not directly political by choice, works in The Shape of Words with titles like, “My Mouth is Shut but My Tongue is Wide Open” and “My Voice is Shaped by Silence” navigate complex contradictions we often face in everyday life. Formally speaking this new body of work is larger in scale, less dense, and more focused on the elegance of fonts whether they be arabesque or more distinctly modern.
Simeen Farhat was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She has lived and worked in the U.S. since 1992, receiving her BFA from Arizona State University, and her MFA from Texas Christian University. Her work has been exhibited globally in Austria, France, Germany, India, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK, at the National Art Gallery in Pakistan; Sharjah Museum of Modern Art; and La Fontaine Center of Contemporary Art, Manama, Bahrain. Farhat participated in the 2009 Texas Biennial; in 2012 she was an Artist in Residence at the ORYX Foundation in Switzerland; and in 2015 she was invited to participate in an exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale, In the Eye of the Thunderstorm: Effervescent Practices from the Arab World. Farhat’s work is represented in the Crown Prince of UAE’s Abu Dhabi Palace Collection, The U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, The Four Seasons Hotel in Dubai, the Peninsula Hotel, Paris and the Dallas County Records Building.
