Aquarelle sur papier, 2023
When we search for the hard boundaries of the body at the molecular level, they disappear. Electrons bounce between atoms as easily as air fills our lungs. Our bodies are like punctured containers, leaving us permeable to one another and to our environment. What if we could hold this truth in sight and then allow it to affect our relationships? This picture plays with making the breath visible and breaking up the typical boundary lines of the body, pointing to our fundamentally uncontainable nature, intertwined with everything.
Nadine Faraj makes paintings with an intensity that combines soul and sensuality. Her figures fully embrace their own splendour, as fluid bodies merge with each other and their surroundings. Faraj handles watercolour with radical freedom. She highlights the vulnerabilities that make up life experiences while affirming a commitment to human rights, LGBTQIA2S+ activism, feminism, bodily autonomy, and collective liberation.
Faraj holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BFA from Concordia University in Montréal. Her work has been exhibited internationally, notably in New York, Montréal, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Athens, and Dubai. Her artworks have been featured in Le Devoir, La Presse, CBC/Radio-Canada, Hyperallergic, Wallpaper, A Women’s Thing, Huffington Post, Artefuse, and Vulture.