Tue 11 - Sun 23 Feb
Following on from Lee Tsai, the Bluecoat will screen Farah Al Qasimi’s Everybody was Invited to a Party, which takes inspiration from ‘Iftah Ya Simsim’, a 1980s Arabic version of Sesame Street, and borrows text from translation books found in London.
The film features hand-sewn puppets, voiced by the artist, and captures moments where language falters and breaks down, but in doing so opens up new avenues of meaning. The slippages in language, mispronunciations and awkward translations build a world of melancholy and humour. Everybody was Invited to a Party also features music composed and performed by Al Qasimi.
Tue 11-Sun 23 Feb, 11am-5pm. Free entry.
About the artist
Farah Al Qasimi makes photographs, films and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children's cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphised.
Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator. Her work is in the collections of MoMA New York, Tate Modern, Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi, and she has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Delfina Foundation in London, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa.