LP. Activation
Farah Salem & Hyde Park Art Center
On September 12th, a special inaugural LP. Activation focused on the work of artist Farah Salem, who will open a solo exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center in March 2025!
Co-Executive Director of Hyde Park Art Center, Jen Tremblay Chambers shared about Hyde Park Art Center’s mission, followed by a conversation with Farah Salem (Artist) and Mariela Acuña (Exhibition Curator) about Farah’s journey to her solo exhibition, Farah Salem: Uninhibited People of the Earth.
Food was provided by LULA CAFE
Image in Background: Farah Salem holds and shakes a cream-colored waist belt instrument, covered in cowry shells. Photo by EdVetté Wilson Jones. | Sixty Inches from the Center
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Artist & Art Therapist, LCPC
Farah Salem is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi, interdisciplinary artist and art therapist based in Chicago. Her studio and art therapy practices are bridged by socially engaged artistic and therapeutic approaches. Farah’s studio practice is rooted in photography, expanding through video, performance, fiber-materials, and installation. Her origins in photography influence the ways she uses materials to sensorily embody concepts she grapples with. In her studio practice, through relational merging and mapping of human and geological bodies, she visions their liberation. By doing so, she examines themes of access, agency, power, making the invisible visible, and the potential erosion of socio-cultural conditioning that distorts our shared realities.
Farah holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her artwork has been featured nationally and internationally at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), EXPO CHICAGO, American University Museum (Washington DC), United Photo Industries/Photoville Gallery (New York), Patel Brown (Toronto), Engage Gallery (Chicago), Bolivia Biennial, Paris Contemporary Art Fair, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait). She has received the 2024 3Arts Award, and 2017 Laureate Winner of the International Womens Photographers Award. Farah completed the Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center, Hatch Residency at Chicago Artist Coalition, ACRE Artist Residency, Per|Form at Contemporary Art Platform (Kuwait) and Journey to Turkey Residency with Crossway Foundation (UK).
Photograph by Tamara Hijazi
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Curator, Exhibitions and Residency Manager
Mariela Acuña is an art administrator and curator from San José, Costa Rica currently based in Chicago. As Exhibitions and Residency Manager at Hyde Park Art Center, her primary role is to steward the Jackman Goldwasser Residency, which invites local, national, and international artists and curators to hone their practice, develop research, and expand their networks in the context of a community-focused contemporary art center. At the Art Center, Mariela also curates exhibitions, manages the micro-publishing platform Green Lantern Press, and with a small team manages the innovative regranting initiative Artists Run Chicago Fund. Mariela is a board member at Comfort Station, a micro-cultural center that activates a historical building in Logan Square with free programs at the intersection of art and life. She holds a BA in Art History and a BFA in Sculpture from Florida Atlantic University and a dual MA in Art Administration and Public Policy and Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Co-Executive Director of Hyde Park Art Center
Jen Tremblay Chambers is Co-Executive Director of Hyde Park Art Center. She has over 15 years of experience serving the Chicago arts community as an arts leader, administrator, and educator, with a focus on building equity and access in the arts sector.
Jen was recognized as a “national changemaker under 40” in 2019 through the American Express “NGen” Fellowship program. She is a co-founder of the White Advocates for Racial Equity Network at the National Guild for Community Arts Education, providing racial literacy and tactical training to a national network of educators, administrators, and executives. She recently served on the Board of Directors at Enrich Chicago, a nonprofit consortium of arts organizations that affects structural, antiracist change across Chicago's diverse arts ecosystem.
Jen holds an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; a Master of Science in Urban Special Education from Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY; and a BA in Fine Arts from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.
The LP., in partnership with HPAC, are working to raise the funds to support Farah's show. We invite you to donate to support, or share about this effort with your community!
Farah Salem: Uninhibited People of the Earth
March 15 - July 19, 2025
Lithostatic 1 (Wall Installation), 2023. Framed inkjet photographic prints, Photographic print on phototex wall installation. Image by Tran Tran.
Uninhibited: People of the Earth (Video Installation), 2023. Performance Video montaged with Archival footage, Sand, Floor Seat. Image by Darren Rigo.
People throughout the Arabian Peninsula are taught to live in respectful relationship with spirits that live beneath the earth called “ahl al ‘arth,” (people of the earth). Kuwaiti-Iraqi artist and art therapist Farah Salem grew up aware of regular interactions with these peaceful and/or punitive spirits. Her mother and grandmothers explained that while some spirits are peaceful, others are upset when disrespected and could retaliate. As a result, Farah learned about ways of moving through the world mindfully so as to not disturb spirits at rest. The knowledge that we don’t “exist alone, but rather in relationship with plants, rocks, animals, and unseen forces” drives her artistic practice. The exhibition Farah Salem: Uninhibited People of the Earth presents new and existing works across media that continue the artist’s study and reinterpretation of healing and ceremonial migratory practices of people of the Arabian Peninsula that seek to repair one’s relationship with oneself, the earth, and other beings.