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Alia Farid (*1985 in Kuwait City, Kuwait, lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico) is a filmmaker and sculptor whose practice centers on lesser-known histories that are often deliberately erased. Her film Chibayish (2023) is recorded at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and follows young marshland residents caring for a water buffalo, in a marsh engulfed by oil infrastructure and industrial waste. Chibayish is part of a larger group of works that Farid has developed since 2018, and that focuses on the impact of extractive industries on the ecological and social fabric of southern Iraq and Kuwait.
Similarly tackling themes of cultural identity, history, colonialism, and the right to remain, Farid’s tapestries look at the under-told histories of Arab and South Asian migration to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the intersectional Palestinian–Puerto Rican solidarity movement. The stitchings on woolen blankets are embroidered by women in Southern Iraq using traditional crafts techniques, in a colorful pallet. Ignoring central perspective and using almost-naïve imagery they illustrate immigration stories documented through family archives, urban history, photographs, and other memorabilia found by the artist.