Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid (b. 1985) works with a range of media including textile, drawing, film, and sculpture to make visible the registers of narratives, stories, and ways of knowing omitted by western hegemony. The exhibition title Bneid Al Gar, Arabic for land of tar, refers to Farid's experiences growing up in an area of Kuwait where large bruise-like stains of oil once punctuated the surface of the earth.

The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award is presented biannually to recognise the contribution of an outstanding international artist making work that is important and relevant to our time. The award of an artistic honorarium of $100,000 USD, an exhibition at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, and an acquisition budget for the inclusion of the artist’s work in the Henie Onstad Collection, together place the programme amongst the most significant art awards internationally.

Caroline Ugelstad, Chair of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme (LWAAP) Jury, and Director of Collection and Exhibitions at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, said: “Together with the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award we are proud to present the first exhibition showcasing all of Alia Farid’s major works to date, offering an in-depth view into the artist’s multifaceted practice. Farid works across different visual expressions, techniques, and craft traditions. The way she produces her works is closely linked to the themes she probes. She is particularly concerned with migration and the movement or change of people, places, traditions, times, and material cultures as a result of geopolitical events. The Jury has great faith in Farid's future artistic career and hopes the award will help develop her artistic practice.”

Ugelstad is curating the exhibition together with María Inés Rodriguez, LWAAP Jury Member and Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation.

Alia Farid: Bneid Al Gar presents a series of handwoven and embroidered textile works from the series Elsewhere (2023), where Farid explores the styles, symbols, and rituals that emerge from processes of migration from one point of the global south to another. The motifs highlighted in the tapestries are culled from photographs, archival material, and conversations with members of the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico. The textiles are created in close collaboration with weavers in southern Iraq, highlighting new meanings, forms, and expressions of shared struggle and solidarity.

Five sculptures from the series In Lieu of What Is (2022) and the installation Palm Orchard (2022) will also be on display at Henie Onstad. In In Lieu of What Is, Farid interrogates the material, political, and cultural aftereffects of the oil industries extractive practices. The large sculptures, inspired by public drinking fountains in the Arabian Gulf, trace connections to natural bodies of water and how they continue to be impacted by desalination plants. Palm Orchard, exhibited in the outdoor area of the museum, consists of artificial palm trees rendered in plastic and LED lights. Together with her films Chibayish 2022, 2023, these works highlight how ecosystems are targeted as a tactic of war and the loss of intergenerational knowledge that results from environmental degradation.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue with new texts by Andrea Andersson, Ruba Katrib, and Maru Pabón and a conversation with María Inés Rodriguez. In collaboration with Henie Onstad, Alia Farid will produce a limited edition artwork for sale. A talk with Alia Farid is programmed for Saturday, 14 September at 12pm.

About Alia Farid:
Alia Farid lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico in San Juan, a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Visual Arts Program at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Critical Theory from the Programa d'Estudis Independents MACBA in Barcelona. In 2023-24, she was the David and Roberta Logie Fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, Chisenhale Gallery in London, and CAC Passerelle in Brest. Farid has been selected to present her first public art commission in the Americas through the Stanford Plinth Project, on view in Stanford University 2023-26.

About Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme:
When Alia Farid was awarded the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award in 2023, she stated:
"Art is an important part of thinking and understanding things. I live in a society that is ambivalent about supporting art and culture, so having the endorsement of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme really means a lot to me."

The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme is a collaboration between Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and the Wilhelmsen family. The award is presented biannually to recognise the contribution of an outstanding international artist making work that is important and relevant to our time. The award is intended to mark a significant milestone in an artist's career. The recipient is appointed by an international jury, and the award consists of three parts: an honorarium of 100,000 US dollars, an exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, including a publication and educational programme, and an acquisition of the artist's work for the Henie Onstad Collection. Alia Farid is the third recipient, following Otobong Nkanga in 2019 and Guadalupe Maravilla in 2021.

Anne Hilde Neset, Director of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, said: “The Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme gives Henie Onstad the opportunity to have comprehensive presentations of artistic practices that might be new to a Norwegian audience but are of great international significance. We are proud to present Alia Farid for the first time in the Nordics. LWAAP also provides important knowledge-building through catalogues, networks, and collection acquisition. It is a visionary collaboration with the AWilhelmsen family, aimed at promoting unity, solidarity, and tolerance through artistic work.”

Paulina Wilhelmsen, Jury Member and Founder of the Award, said: “We are proud to welcome Alia Farid to the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme and to exhibit her work in Norway for the first time. She is a unique artist and an important voice in these turbulent times. Through her art, she explores themes such as migration, shared struggle, and identity, as well as how natural resources are used for political and economic purposes. Her work thus comments on current global issues and carries a powerful message that highlights suppressed narratives.”

The international jury that appointed Alia Farid as the recipient of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award consists of María Inés Rodríguez, Director of the Walter Leblanc Foundation in Brussels and Editor of Tropical Papers; Michelle Kuo, Chief Curator and Publisher at MoMa in New York; Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director at MACBA in Barcelona; Paulina Rider Wilhelmsen, Founder of LWAAP and Wilstar Social Impact in Oslo; Caroline Ugelstad, Chair of the LWAAP Jury and Director of Collection and Exhibitions / Chief Curator at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter; and Tone Hansen, former Director of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Founder of LWAAP, and now Director at the Munch Museum.

The jury's statement:
"We are incredibly proud to announce Alia Farid as the recipient of the award. Her extraordinary practice across multiple media raises awareness of highly important topics in our time whilst carrying a powerful aesthetic and an embedded materiality and sociality that often results in large-scale works. Alia Farid's complex work mediates between the past and the present and, in a poetic processing, draws out omitted histories that push against standard narratives. She explores questions of conflict and control and how power and violence are inflicted on nature and people. We have high expectations for Alia Farid's further activities and believe LWAAP can contribute to her production and strong social commitment at a timely point in her artistic vocation."