ABOUT

Farah Allibhai is a Gujarati Asian born in Uganda, East Africa whose expulsion in 1972, aged 1, brought her to the UK. Having a unique lived experience as well as a diverse cultural and religious heritage, her work and life's journey is informed through an intersectional lens. She continues to work in Wales having lived in Cardiff most of her life.

  • As a multi-disciplinary artist and curator, her work centres around healing the inner self through processes of self discovery as well as self realisation and actualisation.

    Over time her personal practices have become embodied. Through her arts practice, she is guided to express ways of healing that weave interior and exterior personal landscapes, the spiritual and earthly realms.

    Drawing on her lived experience, inspired by diversity, the metaphysical and the spiritual, she questions how we can connect to ourselves, the environment and the communities in which we find ourselves. To date her work is observational, experiential, performative and site-specific.

    In 2015 Farah set up the collective 1800hrs and has since been a member of Aurora Trinity Collective and board member ofDisability Arts Cymru

BIO

Declaring myself an artist has been met with doubt and silent contention for many years. An early memory of mine is of taking the train to Peterborough for a Shia Ismaili Muslim family friend’s wedding. It was the first long train journey I had ever taken. I must have been about 9 or 10. On boarding the train, I saw a man sitting by himself drawing. He told me that he was an artist and I was compelled to ask him if I could sit with him which I did.  Giving me pencil and paper, we sat silently drawing. I didn’t keep the drawing but remember him generously telling me it was very good. Our youngest impressions are known to be our most formative but there is no blueprint of how we proceed.

By the time I reached art college in my 30’s, I had obtained a humanities degree in media and art history and I was already influenced by other stuff outside of contemporary art. Practiced in Ismaili esotericism, yoga, tai chi and Taoism, my experience of healing was elevated after having had a brain haemorrhage and near death experience aged 29. My daily healing meditation practice led me to theories of quantum physics, the healing capabilities of water, the mind- emotion-body connection and other holistic approaches to health, wellbeing and trauma. A clarion call took me to the Himalayas in 2010, an experience which left a profound impression upon me. During my time studying art, instead of emulating other artists, I clumsily attempted to translate themes of disempowerment, personal obstacles, journeys and spirituality through sculpture, light, performance art and video. I quickly realised I would never make work like the artists I’d studied such as James Turrell.

Post art college, my practice became less ambiguous as I found myself bridging healing and art through secular acts of being. Opportunities to make work came via grassroots art organisation Made in Roath and Cardiff MADE. For a time, I also tried my hand at performing arts at Off Centre, a community performing arts group. During that time I was so lucky to collaborate with a range of incredibly talented artists here in Wales .

Seeking opportunities wherever possible, fortunate to receive a two week Wales Lab residency with National Theatre Wales in 2015, the inception of Take A Moment and exhibition From The Sea To The City 2016, I was later awarded a yearlong placement on the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries Programme as curatorial assistant for Artes Mundi 9 in 2021. The unprecedented global pandemic in 2020, though its impact largely negative, did give rise to the availability of the Wales in Venice 10 Fellowship through Arts Council Wales which I was given in 2022. Then able to undertake a nomadic residency with Fourth Land resulted in the making of Somewhere in Spain 2023 working with international as well as UK based artists. My studio residency at Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, supported the production of My Bhãti in 2024. 

The availability of these opportunities has been invaluable in resourcing and funding the development and evolution of my practice as I weave experience and art that holds, heals and sustains me. 

If you don’t see a clear path, sometimes you have to make it yourself.

 WORDS BY DYLAN HUW

“In the silence Farah Allibhai builds, every action has gravitas and intentionality, and every image contains within it a glimmer of potential for more ethically sustainable ways of relating to each other, to our surroundings, and perhaps above all to the self. An ethics of the anti-spectacular prompts consideration anew of what it might (could, should) mean to be a sensing person, here, now. Of how to confront a question asked by Farah, repeatedly, in conversation: How do we not become oppressors – not only of others, but of ourselves?”