Talk: Instagram live with Farah Al Qasimi

Join us live on Instagram as Sara Raza, Curator and writer, speaks with Farah Al Qasimi, one of our festival artists.

Born in London in 1979, Sara Raza is a New York City based curator and writer specialising in contemporary global art and visual cultures. She was recently appointed as associate director of Hawai’i Contemporary (formerly the Honolulu Biennial Foundation). Previously she was the  Guggenheim UBS MAP curator for the Middle East and North Africa, where she led the third and final phase of the project and curated But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2016), which travelled to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2018). Raza has curated exhibitions and projects for international biennials, festivals and museums, including the Rubin Museum of Art, New York,  Mathaf: Modern Arab Art Museum, Doha, Qatar; the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Saskatchewan, Canada; the Tashkent Biennale, Uzbekistan; Rhizoma (Generation in Waiting), Saudi Pavilion, the 55th Venice Biennale; and the Baku Public Art Festival, Azerbaijan. In addition, she has organised a number of exhibitions for Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE, where she served as curator from 2011 to 2014 of leading artists from the MENA region. Formerly, she was the head of education and public art at YARAT, Baku, Azerbaijan; founding curator at Alaan Art Space, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and curator of public programmes at Tate Modern, London. Raza writes for numerous publications and has contributed to artist monographs and catalogues, and is the long-standing West and Central Asia editor. She runs an independent curatorial studio entitled Punk Orientalism and is a member of the faculty at the School of Visual Arts for the MA in Curatorial Practice. Sara holds a BA (hons) in English Literature and History of Art and a MA in 20th Century Art History and Theory both from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and pursued studies towards her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London.  In 2016, she was the recipient of the ArtTable New Leadership Award for Women in the Arts and was honored by Deutsche Bank and Apollo as one of 40 under 40 global art specialists (thinkers’ category) (2017). 

Joining instructions for how to join this Instagram Live on 1 October will be announced closer to the event. Please check back or keep an eye on our social media channels.