SANATORIUM presents Farah Al Qasimi's first solo exhibition in Istanbul, titled Desert Hyacinth. Curated by Ulya Soley the exhibition takes place from September 12 to October 26, 2025.
Working primarily across photography, video, and music, Farah Al Qasimi places Desert Hyacinth (2025) at the center of the exhibition, lending both its title and spirit to the show. The desert hyacinth, a steadfast plant native to the Middle East and North Africa, thrives in sandy and arid environments, producing delicate star-shaped white flowers. Its persistence in the face of extreme conditions mirrors the resilience of communities that continue to survive and assert their presence under challenging sociopolitical contexts.
Desert Hyacinth unfolds as an immersive photographic installation on the gallery's ground floor. Expansive, large-scale prints stretch across the walls, creating a backdrop for a selection of images drawn from Al Qasimi's ongoing series, photographed in the United Arab Emirates since 2021. Fleeting metaphors, clandestine encounters behind closed doors, the struggle to resist internalizing a climate of fear under constant surveillance and control, interiors and exteriors, the inside and outside of the body; all coalesce through photographs displayed side by side and layered upon one another. Often free from the overt presence of the camera's gaze, these images evoke the sensation of viewing a city from above while simultaneously focusing on its most intimate details.
The snail figure that appears in the photographs on the ground floor reemerges at the center of Surge (2022), a video installation presented on the floor above. Structured in three parts - 'Bone', 'Coral', and 'Snail Song' - this work reinterprets the destructive impact of technology on marine ecosystems, framed through the themes of global trade, cycles of production and consumption, death, and desire. Combining found footage from YouTube and TikTok with the artist's own recordings, the piece is further enhanced by Al Qasimi's original music compositions.
The exhibition centers on moments of intimacy that bloom despite structures of control; sometimes subtly, and sometimes as boldly as in the series titled Six Different Screams. It embraces those who reject normative scripts to create their own, explores queer desire, and traces the efforts of those striving to live justly under the shadow of rule-defying neoliberal forces, all woven into a compelling and immersive visual world.
Opening Reception: Friday, September 12, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Location: SANATORIUM's new space - Emekyemez Mah. Abdussalah Sk. No: 3, 34421 Beyoğlu/İstanbul
About the artist:
Farah Al Qasimi (1991, Abu Dhabi) makes photographs, films, and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children's cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphized. Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator.
Farah Al Qasimi (1991, Abu Dhabi) makes photographs, films, and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children's cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphized. Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator.
Her work is in the collections of MoMA New York, Tate Modern, Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi, and she has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Delfina Foundation in London, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. In 2025, she was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow, awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.