Farah, Adam
Adam Farah is an artist and composer who also practices under the name free.yard. They make installations, film, performances and objects that explore technology and pop culture in relation to the construction of identity and queer culture. Their video works, or ‘momentations’, are named after Mariah Carey’s theorisations of the word ‘moment’, which the artist relates to the appropriation and recasting of language in queer culture. These short films, often shot on a mobile phone around the artist’s home in North London, focus on the ‘ever-expansive and nuanced creative endeavours and potentials that emerge from endz’. Mainly referring to working-class communities with large ethnic minority populations, endz are places where poor and diasporic communities disidentify with and defy capitalist technological advancement. Much of Farah’s work, for instance, repurposes old or discarded products and technologies, assigning them a use and value outside market control and planned obsolescence.
The work I AM FREE (FREE AM I MIX), 2018, is a wall-sized poster showing the artist wearing a T-shirt he was given by a friend. The top is custom-printed on the front and back with lyrics from the song ‘I Am Free’ by Mariah Carey, which represents an important influence in the artist’s life. The photograph has been digitally manipulated to express the desire to feel and be free enough to fly, while also being an ode to the power and lifeforce of friendships. Like much of Farah’s work, it gives ‘side-eye’ to a particular kind of classism in post-internet art that often fails to account for the strength and sincerity of alternative approaches to creativity.
- Artwork Details: 245 x 210cm
- Edition: 1 of 3 + 2 AP
- Material description: Digital print on wallpaper
- Credit line: © the artist. Image courtesy of the artist
- Theme:
- Medium: Print
- Accession number: ACC16/2020