Frieze 91 members are invited to a series of studio visits taking place across our fair cities with artists from the Focus section of Frieze London in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fair.
Adam Farah-Saad (b. 1991, London, UK) – also known as free.yard – is an artist, composer and filmmaker living and working in London. He graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2014 with a BA in Drawing. Adam Farah‑Saad’s work sits somewhere between the mnemonic, with objects sparking associations and identifications, and a process of mapping, where walking, revisiting and cruising one’s past forms a large part of his practice. Loss is frequently his subject, whether that be the loss of his mother, or the end of a romantic relationship, severed connection with his father, or the parts of oneself that get lost as we go through these experiences. But his work is far from confessional. Biographical elements are largely restricted to titles like MY POOR TRAPPED IMMIGRANT PARENT CONSUMED BY BITTERNESS, WHOSE CRUSHED DREAMS TURNED INTO MY TRAUMA (The Sidewardly Mobile Mix) (2021‑ongoing) and the materials he uses, in this particular work a dado rail and in other cases a Mariah Carey lyric, videos set around London, the smell of poppers mixed with KA Grape soda or a gym climbing rope from Kate Bush’s school, are more allusive records of a past, giving room to provoke memory in the viewer. Do they identify with these objects, or are they specific to other lives, such as queer, working class or immigrant experiences? Neither universal nor exactly personal, Farah‑Saad’s works put his life and others’ in a broad social frame.