Farah Al Qasimi on Algorithms, Creativeness and the Risk of Repair

In ‘Psychic Repair’, the artist examines how digital tradition, client spectacle and private reminiscence form up to date life, reflecting on pictures’s shifting function in an age of surveillance, self-performance and infinite picture circulation.

23 June 2026

At the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, Farah Al Qasimi’s exhibition ‘Psychic Repair’ introduced collectively pictures, sound and set up to discover the emotional and psychological situations of the current. Moving between bedrooms, marketplaces, ads and digital areas, the exhibition thought of how intimacy is more and more formed by algorithmic programs, and the way creativeness stays a significant device for navigating up to date life. Al Qasimi displays on pictures after surveillance, the politics of self-presentation, the function of contradiction, and the way restore begins with asking higher questions.

‘Psychic Repair’ explores the hidden forces that form how we stay as we speak, from magnificence tradition to on-line life to inherited beliefs. How do you utilize pictures to disclose these forces whereas nonetheless conserving their complexity and thriller?

Farah Al Qasimi: I believe persons are more and more distrustful of pictures as a result of it’s been tailored to surveil, to flatten and transmit identification about people to governments or companies. Al Qasimi displays on pictures after surveillance, the politics of self-presentation, the function of contradiction, and the way restore begins with asking higher questions. With this present, I used to be primarily involved with how the sacred area of a bed room turns into infiltrated by algorithmic presence, so I used to be photographing lots of people being hidden or camouflaged of their environment.

In the exhibition, properties, procuring areas, and web aesthetics appear to mix collectively. What pursuits you in regards to the overlap between intimacy and spectacle in up to date life?

The idea of spectacle is altering in scale – it’s all about learn how to maintain somebody’s consideration in an image-saturated world, and lots of of these pictures exist on small, private screens. In the set up, I prefer to construct one thing additive out of plenty of little components, and to play with shifting scale to acknowledge the picture languages of billboards and in-app ads.

Your images typically really feel dreamlike or surreal. In ‘Psychic Repair’, fantasy appears much less like an escape and extra like a part of actuality itself. Do you see creativeness as a type of survival, resistance, or one thing extra unsure?

Absolutely. It was a type of survival for me in my childhood, as an obsessive daydreamer. Everybody feels the decision to transcend or disconnect from their atmosphere sooner or later, and creativeness is critical to call the choice.

In the pictures, I attempt to level to those moments of transcendence in common life, like a mural of an island vacation spot, or a Snapchat filter, or an merchandise of shapewear – all issues that talk to our need to entry distinction NOW.

The exhibition attracts out of your experiences rising up within the UAE and residing within the United States, however the work doesn’t really feel strictly autobiographical. How do you stability private reminiscence with the best way audiences learn cultural identification?

I do really feel like typically, zooming in is the best way to be extra basic. You can entry the worldwide with the hyper-local, as a result of what you’re taking a look at is human. In a practical manner, which means photographing in these actually private, intimate areas after which exhibiting them subsequent to {a photograph} of a busy market.

Rituals of self-presentation seem all through your work, from make-up and trend to posing and efficiency. What do these rituals reveal about identification within the age of social media?

Identity is increasingly more one thing outdoors of ourselves – a projection relatively than an interiority. Just a few years in the past, there was a “trend” on TikTok that walked customers by means of learn how to use their front-facing cameras to see how different folks considered them. We’re turning into detrimentally self-conscious and demanding a clear absolutism of illustration that simply isn’t pure – we should always have the ability to be messy, shifting.

Sound performs an vital function in ‘Psychic Repair’, making a temper that feels each playful and unsettling. What does sound mean you can categorical that pictures alone can’t?

It’s simply fully totally different. It accesses a unique emotional register. Sometimes folks join with the rhythm, and it turns into a bodily response. Looking feels slower one way or the other. Things unfold over time; your notion isn’t reliant on a break up second.

Your work typically brings collectively humour and nervousness, tenderness and absurdity. Do you assume contradiction is critical to characterize up to date life, particularly on-line life?

Of course. People are self-contradictory, layered and complex. My work is about folks, so it ought to replicate that.

The title ‘Psychic Repair’ suggests therapeutic, however the exhibition appears extra inquisitive about exposing emotional and social fractures than fixing them. What does “repair” imply to you as we speak?

I believe step one to restore is acknowledging that there’s a drawback. I’m not providing any solutions or diagnoses, however I’m making an attempt to explain the questions with larger readability.

This exhibition was on view on the SCAD Museum of Art in Georgia from 30 January to 7 June 2026.