Tahir Karmali: Bound Between Cliffs: Circle Art Gallery
Past exhibition
Works
Tahir Karmali (Kenyan b. 1987)
Lives and works in New York
Wednesday 31 August - 1 October 2022
We are pleased to present Tahir Karmali’s first solo show at Circle.
Working across disciplines, Karmali explores topics of migration, belonging, climate degradation and the landscape. Through a varied material palette, this body of work examines notions of tension, shared pain and anguish. Karmali is interested in focusing on how much daily violence occurs through modernity and constructed environments that are seemingly unremarkable. Disasters such as oil spills and inaccessible constructed spaces devastate our environment and living things yet do not occupy mass media attention.
Using silk fibers as a way to represent the body, his work seeks to express the effects of the violence inflicted on us. In the various constructions in the gallery, Karmali creates tension between steel sheets, silk fabrics and metal bolts piercing the fabric. As silk is naturally a weightless fibre, though very strong, the contrast of the delicateness of the silk draws attention to the aggressiveness of the metal. This exhibition uses print, textiles, sculptures, and sound to create a multi-sensory experience for the viewer.
Karmali received a Masters degree in digital photography from The School of Visual Arts in New York in 2015. After numerous solo exhibition and group show success in various countries, including (selected) Water Scarcity: Perpetual Thirst in 2022 at Wave Hill, New York in 2022, Heimaten, Museum für Gewerbe, Hamburg in 2021, Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York 2021, Second Careers, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 2020, Paper Boarders, IPCNY, New York, 2019Tracing Obsolescence, Apexart, New York, 2018; Immigrant Artists and the American West, Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, 2018; New Threads, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2018; Biennal Forografica Bogota, 2017, Bogota, Columbia and PAPER:work, Pioneer Works, New York, 2017, Karmali’s work has also featured in the Addis Foto Fest, Lagos Photo Festival. In 2019, he was one of the artists commissioned to create work following the inaugural Open Call for The Shed Museum in New York. Recent residencies include; the Montelo artist residency in Nevada 2020 and the Watermill Centre, New York State in 2021.
Tahir Karmali collaborated with Ami Doshi Shah, Jessi Highet, Adam Karmali, and Tosheka Textiles.
Lives and works in New York
Wednesday 31 August - 1 October 2022
We are pleased to present Tahir Karmali’s first solo show at Circle.
Working across disciplines, Karmali explores topics of migration, belonging, climate degradation and the landscape. Through a varied material palette, this body of work examines notions of tension, shared pain and anguish. Karmali is interested in focusing on how much daily violence occurs through modernity and constructed environments that are seemingly unremarkable. Disasters such as oil spills and inaccessible constructed spaces devastate our environment and living things yet do not occupy mass media attention.
Using silk fibers as a way to represent the body, his work seeks to express the effects of the violence inflicted on us. In the various constructions in the gallery, Karmali creates tension between steel sheets, silk fabrics and metal bolts piercing the fabric. As silk is naturally a weightless fibre, though very strong, the contrast of the delicateness of the silk draws attention to the aggressiveness of the metal. This exhibition uses print, textiles, sculptures, and sound to create a multi-sensory experience for the viewer.
Karmali received a Masters degree in digital photography from The School of Visual Arts in New York in 2015. After numerous solo exhibition and group show success in various countries, including (selected) Water Scarcity: Perpetual Thirst in 2022 at Wave Hill, New York in 2022, Heimaten, Museum für Gewerbe, Hamburg in 2021, Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York 2021, Second Careers, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 2020, Paper Boarders, IPCNY, New York, 2019Tracing Obsolescence, Apexart, New York, 2018; Immigrant Artists and the American West, Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, 2018; New Threads, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2018; Biennal Forografica Bogota, 2017, Bogota, Columbia and PAPER:work, Pioneer Works, New York, 2017, Karmali’s work has also featured in the Addis Foto Fest, Lagos Photo Festival. In 2019, he was one of the artists commissioned to create work following the inaugural Open Call for The Shed Museum in New York. Recent residencies include; the Montelo artist residency in Nevada 2020 and the Watermill Centre, New York State in 2021.
Tahir Karmali collaborated with Ami Doshi Shah, Jessi Highet, Adam Karmali, and Tosheka Textiles.
Click here for a video interview with Tahir Karmali on YouTube.
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