Watch Now: Frieze London Artist Award Winner Adham Faramawy ‘And these deceitful waters’ (2023)
Adham Faramawy’s Frieze Artist Award commission posits the river Thames as a colonial artery and site of ecological collapse
Adham Faramawy’s Frieze Artist Award commission posits the river Thames as a colonial artery and site of ecological collapse
And these deceitful water (2023) is a new moving-image work by Adham Faramawy, the 2023 recipient of the Frieze Artist Award. The award is co-commissioned and co-produced by Forma and Frieze.
The video and sculptural assemblage examines the history of the Thames, its underground tributaries and the plants along its banks as a way of exploring the river as a colonial artery and a site of ecological collapse.
Employing a three-person dance performance with music and spoken word, Faramawy’s work tells the migration stories of the river and its flora, surveying how they build national identity and can construct, reinforce and dissolve borders. The work weaves tales together, illustrating how land becomes co-opted into projects of nation-building, colonization, ecological collapse, toxicity and migration. Faramawy’s project is installed at the entrance to Frieze London this year.
Adham Faramawy is an artist of Egyptian descent based in London. Their work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation, photography, print and painting, engaging with concerns of materiality, touch, the body and toxicity to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalized communities.
