Farid Karim

About

As an architectural designer Farid continues his interest in material fabrication at all scales, with a particular interest in the embodied meaning/memory of the reclaimed/reused. This was celebrated at the 2019 RA Summer Exhibition, with the piece 'Hooverbag Terrazzo '. Farid Also exhibited at the RA the year prior . Being of Syrian heritage, Farid was naturally drawn closer to issues concerning the Middle-East, his final year project investigates the how the displaced domestic memory and traditions of Syrian refugees are hosted by generic Scandinavian environments. Project is dedicated to his grandparents.

Statement

Over 100,000 Syrians have been given asylum in Sweden, leaving behind not just their homes, but more importantly what it means to be from Aleppo. My grandad and his friends are proof that culture can survive displacement, even if it is found next to H&M. This project does not resolve anything, it preserves, or at the very least remember.  

Remembering Aleppo

For five years Aleppo has been dragged through the epicentre of an ongoing civil war, resulting in both memory being destroyed and destruction being remembered. With unprecedented accessibility to the internet using smartphones, there has been an indiscriminate flurry of data digitally archiving events, objects and spaces of military, historical and personal significance. Generating a sensory taxonomy of textures, aromas and sounds, proving the image to be a fundamental tool for both personal and digital reconstruction. Aleppean domesticity is slowly being remembered. Whilst memory, in both senses of the word, has been displaced by digital translations, for many Aleppean residents, everyday domesticity and traditions have also been subject to geographical displacement. The project follows the domestic relocation of the author's grandparents from the once merchant metropolis of Aleppo to the Scandinavian suburbs of Sweden, specifically to a shopping mall atrium in Stockholm where similar to the coffee houses of Aleppo, a new public domesticity has begun to flourish. This sensitive threshold between the personal and the generic uses the digital as a mediator for reconstruction, not necessarily to resolve but to preserve. Or at the very least. remember.