SIMEEN FARHAT

Simeen Farhat is an internationally renowned artist and academic. She challenges popular perceptions in the West through her multi media works.

Farhat’s text sculptures are used aesthetically as well as philosophically. Her layered and condensed texts use the amenable forms of the Arabic script as cluster formations, eliciting their linguistic power through an amalgam of visual energy and through allegorical references to Persian and Urdu poetry.
By pairing female forms with poetic text in her installations, Farhat strives to show a nexus between mind and soul. For Farhat a mind is free to think and a soul is free to exist, whether with or without the coverings of an outer garment. By pairing the text with the ethereal figures, Farhat encourages not only a monologue between mind and body, but also a dialogue with the audience. She seeks to examine how her installations are perceived by audiences from different cultures. And through that process she poses queries -- Do the life-size, veiled figures represent the ideals of modesty and purity? Do they demonstrate that women have the right to think and speak freely? Do these mysterious, faceless figures threaten or confuse non-Moslims or Occidentals? Do those unfamiliar with the veil worry that the wearers will attack them? Is the Occidental threatened by the veil?