Alia Farid, centre, with members of the Henie Onstad team, who awarded her the art prize. Photo: Henie Onstad
Alia Farid, centre, with members of the Henie Onstad team, who awarded her the art prize. Photo: Henie Onstad
Alia Farid, centre, with members of the Henie Onstad team, who awarded her the art prize. Photo: Henie Onstad
Alia Farid, centre, with members of the Henie Onstad team, who awarded her the art prize. Photo: Henie Onstad

Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid awarded $100,000 as winner of Norwegian art prize


Melissa Gronlund
  • English
  • Arabic

Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid has won Norway's Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award worth $100,000.

The prize, awarded in collaboration with the country's Henie Onstad museum, also grants Farid an exhibition at the space and one of her works will be acquired for its permanent collection.

“This money will help me develop my practice and my studio,” says Farid, speaking to The National from New Orleans. “Having this endorsement allows me to engage with ideas for a longer period of time and in more sustained research.”

Farid, who lives in Kuwait and Puerto Rico, was in Louisiana on a residency programme hosted by the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art and Thought. She is researching the environmental and social conditions around the Gulf of Mexico, which is increasingly prone to flooding due to climate change — taking her from the Gulf marshlands to institutional archives, such as that of the Amistad Research Centre at Tulane University in New Orleans. The records reveal a long history of racial discrimination in terms of which towns and areas of Louisiana have been given support and protection in the changing climate.

This nexus of ecology, history and politics has emerged as the lens through which Farid views her subjects, which tend to be concentrated in the other Gulf — the Arabian Gulf. Their modes of everyday life create a jumping-off point for her work, which unfurls into stories and connections to history.

“My work engages the aesthetics of the Gulf and its vernacular,” she says. “And how the past shows up in the present. It is a back-and-forth process.”

For her 2018 piece Contrary Life, a commission for the Jameel Arts Centre, Farid worked with Kuwaiti artist Aseel AlYaqoub to create a fantastical version of palm trees and other Gulf flora, rendered in odd heights and bright, colourful lights. It was at once a nod to the Khaleeji practice of covering trees with bright fairy lights and a way to highlight an ecology that many don’t associate with the Gulf.

A similar project went up at the Whitney Biennial last yeat, where tall, spiky, neon-coloured trees created an outdoor grove in the urban landscape.

Alia Farid's grove of Khaleeji palm trees, installed at the 2022 Whitney Biennial (Palm Orchard, 2022). Photograph by Ryan Lowry
Alia Farid's grove of Khaleeji palm trees, installed at the 2022 Whitney Biennial (Palm Orchard, 2022). Photograph by Ryan Lowry

“At the Whitney, the fake palm trees were stand-ins for the decimated palm forest in southern Iraq,” she says. “The majority of people associate the Arab region with the desert and that’s it, but there so much more."

The Iraqi marshlands, which also extend into Kuwait, have become a significant subject for the artist. In an ongoing series of sculptures she casts vessels used to store water in resin — producing them at gargantuan scale, like monuments to everyday sustainability.

The project, which made its debut in Farid’s solo show at the Kunsthalle Basel last year, gives equal weighting to both the traditional clay vessels, with their bulbous bodies and ear-like handles, and contemporary plastic water bottles, with their indents for easy gripping appearing like a thoughtful striped pattern.

Elsewhere at the Whitney Biennial, she showed a version of her film Chibayish, which juxtaposes an innocent world in the marshes with a dry, rubbish-strewn future.

Farid is the third recipient of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award, which marks a significant moment in an artist’s career. South American artist Guadalupe Maravilla, who lives in New York, won the award in 2021 and Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga, who lives in Belgium, won the prize in 2019. Farid's exhibition at the museum is planned for 2024 and will be her first show in the Nordic region.

“Alia Farid's complex work mediates between the past and the present and, in a poetic processing, draws out omitted histories that push against standard narratives,” said the jury.

“She explores questions of conflict and control and how power and violence are inflicted on nature and people. We have high expectations for Alia Farid's further activities and believe LWAAP can contribute to her production and strong social commitment at a timely point in her artistic vocation.”

Defined benefit and defined contribution schemes explained

Defined Benefit Plan (DB)

A defined benefit plan is where the benefit is defined by a formula, typically length of service to and salary at date of leaving.

Defined Contribution Plan (DC) 

A defined contribution plan is where the benefit depends on the amount of money put into the plan for an employee, and how much investment return is earned on those contributions.

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4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
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Always use only regulated platforms

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Engine: 5.6-litre V8

Gearbox: Seven-speed automatic

Power: 428hp @ 5,800rpm

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Salah in numbers

€39 million: Liverpool agreed a fee, including add-ons, in the region of 39m (nearly Dh176m) to sign Salah from Roma last year. The exchange rate at the time meant that cost the Reds £34.3m - a bargain given his performances since.

13: The 25-year-old player was not a complete stranger to the Premier League when he arrived at Liverpool this summer. However, during his previous stint at Chelsea, he made just 13 Premier League appearances, seven of which were off the bench, and scored only twice.

57: It was in the 57th minute of his Liverpool bow when Salah opened his account for the Reds in the 3-3 draw with Watford back in August. The Egyptian prodded the ball over the line from close range after latching onto Roberto Firmino's attempted lob.

7: Salah's best scoring streak of the season occurred between an FA Cup tie against West Brom on January 27 and a Premier League win over Newcastle on March 3. He scored for seven games running in all competitions and struck twice against Tottenham.

3: This season Salah became the first player in Premier League history to win the player of the month award three times during a term. He was voted as the division's best player in November, February and March.

40: Salah joined Roger Hunt and Ian Rush as the only players in Liverpool's history to have scored 40 times in a single season when he headed home against Bournemouth at Anfield earlier this month.

30: The goal against Bournemouth ensured the Egyptian achieved another milestone in becoming the first African player to score 30 times across one Premier League campaign.

8: As well as his fine form in England, Salah has also scored eight times in the tournament phase of this season's Champions League. Only Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, with 15 to his credit, has found the net more often in the group stages and knockout rounds of Europe's premier club competition.

Updated: March 30, 2023, 8:06 AM`