Q: Can you tell me about your background?

A: I grew up in many different places and call nowhere home but Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark is where my family is.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A: Super 8 films from around the age of 7-8 and some Polaroids. I played a lot with film and analog photography, except some photos I didn’t really make 2 D work till much later.

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

A: There is no ranking as such, one inspires and leads to the other. I would say the visual outcome is less important as a lot of my work happens organically and there is a lot of chance involved. Lately I’ve made more work that is far more composed. These also start as off cuts and get reconfigured into new works. Some of the materials I use are 100+ years old linen and hemp. These do whatever they want depending on the weave, ageing, stains, fibre damage etc.

Q: The process and idea surrounding the different bodies of work, can you tell us more about them? – Fex. The sun-bleached canvases. The fabrics that are dug down in ashes, and/or treated with Clay/Mud. The silk works that are treated with a mix of alcohol, vinegar and salt.

I am very interested in knowing more about how and why these came to life?

A: I traveled to Iceland and the blanket that lined my sleeping bag was dug down in the foot of a volcano. It was the volcano’s birthday.
All these works are made parallel, as one was dug down in Iceland, another work was being sun bleached in my window in London. The silk works came after the sun bleached ones, they are negatives.

I used to work in a photography lab in my late teens and I was also an assistant, that tought me some techniques i use but my interest is in camera less photography so I’ve developed a lot of organic processes that all fill their function. The clays and mud’s are predominantly sourced from places I travel to, the mud is from the dead sea in Israel. I’ve always believed in a self-sufficient lifestyle and studio practice, it’s important to me that the materials are sourced by me and they all have a history and get recycled back into the work cycle.

Q: What influences you?

A: The places the materials come from and the stories that surround them.  I read science books and magazines, watch documentaries, travel to places.  I look at architecture and spatial design, traditional craft and old techniques for making things and I try them out. Failures are really inspiring I think, they make better works.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment?

A: They need to look harder and closer on so many different levels. There have always been movements and trends but contemporary art is so diverse. In my circle of friends there are figurative oil painters, performance, video, sound artists and Internet artists that work with found material, and all have expansive practices that weave in so many techniques and so much skill. We all have mutual appreciation and respect for each others work and share thoughts and ideas but I can’t say one is the same as the other.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

A: I just opened my first solo show with Almine Rech Gallery in Brussels.  It’s titled “Notes on running water” It includes some new paintings based around collected rain water from artificial cloud seeding and wells in conflict regions in Africa. I’m also doing other various things with them for FIAC, Miami and London.  I’m  preparing work for “Pangaea that’s opening at Saatchi gallery early 2015. Finally I’m making plans for my second research trip to the seed bank in Svalbard.

Link to Artist Page >> Ayan Farah

Link to Gallerist Page

The post Ayan Farah – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Farah´s work is often not painted at all, instead undergoing an elaborate process of digging down, dying and sun bleaching.

Farah obtains the physical and tactile records of natural phenomena as a part of her artistic practice. The artist travels to carefully selected locations scattered in the North European countries and bring the imprints of long-lasting nature processes into existence of her site-specific masterpieces.

For instance the work Eldfell was part of a sleeping bag dug down for six months at the foot of the volcano Eldfell in Heimaey, Iceland. The ash emitted was used to stain the material and to mark the anniversary of its last eruption.

In more recent work Farah has extended her tools from natural sunlight and environmental sources to the use of unconventional technologies such as UV-light from an old fashioned sun bed purchased on ebay which when applied to the materials and cocktail of organic and synthetic paint and fluids causes brilliantly subtle and unexpected results and the work balances on its control of chance.

The delicate nature of the work allows it to become part of space and material. The state of the material shifts as the light changes throughout the day, revealing folds, layers, lucidity and opaqueness.

While supporting the translucent material, the stretcher becomes integrated in the work and the physical space it occupies. In contrast to the time consuming process of sun and UV bleaching, Farah’s physical application process is that of controlling the ingredients of her endeavors and repositioning their results by subtle nuances of overlap, seams, and folds.

Ayan Farah – At Almine Rech

Read more About Ayan Farah  – Vigo Gallery – London

Upcoming Shows: 

Bugada Cargnel – The Figure In The Carpet – Opening Jan 31, 2014

Almine Rech – Brussels – October 2014

Excerpt from a text by : Sara Ingemann Holm-Nielsen Read the full text here >>  Touching Nature

Farah obtains the physical and tactile records of natural phenomena as a part of her artistic practice. The artist travels to carefully selected locations scattered in the North European countries and bring the imprints of long-lasting nature processes into existence of her site-specific masterpieces.

The trademark of her practice is to make use of unconventional technology and natural resources while creating sun-bleached canvases, UV-light processed paintings or solar photographs on silk and cotton. An almost sustainable artistic practice where the canvases and objects deliberately put in different locations become “stained” by the time.

As a result, wind, sunlight, rain and snow penetrate the material so immensely that their traces become fully integrated in the work. This reduces the physicality of the object and makes it part of the physical architectural space it occupies, and also connects it to the non-material lucidity of moving image and sound.

In her own words this is how Farah explain her artistic practice. “It’s about how the work occupies space and co-exits with it, it’s about weight and weightlessness, the making or the unmaking of the work and its nature, it’s cause and creation.” 

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