Tahir Carl Karmali
Tahir Karmali received a Masters in Digital Photography from the School of Visual Arts in NY in 2015. He has participated in numerous workshops and exhibited widely, including: Tracing Obsolescence, Apexart, New York, 2018; Immigrant Artists and the American West, Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, 2018; New Threads, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2018; Biennal Forografica Bogota, 2017, Bogota, Columbia and PAPER:work, Pioneer Works, New York, 2017. Karmali’s work has featured in the Addis Foto Fest, Lagos Photo Festival. In 2019, he was one of the artists commissioned to create work following the inaugural Open Call for The Shed Museum in New York.
Karmali’s practice focuses on the transformation of objects and materials by global economic flows. He draws on his observations of these, as well as his own physical experience of moving through international borders and cultural spheres. Paradise (his new body of work) is a new and on-going body of work in which Karmali engages with time and memory and his experience of migration. Combining screen-printing and dyeing techniques, Karmali creates atmospheric compositions built up from personal photographs, which evoke the humidity and ecosystem of his mother’s memory of her native Seychelles islands. Abstract from a …
Tahir Karmali received a Masters in Digital Photography from the School of Visual Arts in NY in 2015. He has participated in numerous workshops and exhibited widely, including: Tracing Obsolescence, Apexart, New York, 2018; Immigrant Artists and the American West, Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, 2018; New Threads, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2018; Biennal Forografica Bogota, 2017, Bogota, Columbia and PAPER:work, Pioneer Works, New York, 2017. Karmali’s work has featured in the Addis Foto Fest, Lagos Photo Festival. In 2019, he was one of the artists commissioned to create work following the inaugural Open Call for The Shed Museum in New York.
Karmali’s practice focuses on the transformation of objects and materials by global economic flows. He draws on his observations of these, as well as his own physical experience of moving through international borders and cultural spheres. Paradise (his new body of work) is a new and on-going body of work in which Karmali engages with time and memory and his experience of migration. Combining screen-printing and dyeing techniques, Karmali creates atmospheric compositions built up from personal photographs, which evoke the humidity and ecosystem of his mother’s memory of her native Seychelles islands. Abstract from a distance, with the image appearing only upon close inspection, the Paradise series possess a dreamlike quality, transporting the viewer to a time and place long past, both real and imaginary.
Courtesy of Circle Art Agency