Sharif
Farrag
He // Him // His
[ID: A black-and-white headshot of a man. The man looks directly at the camera and gives a warm smile on his mustachioed and lightly bearded face. He is dressed casually in a t-shirt and cap.]
Los Angeles, CA
2022 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by David Horvitz and Francie Bishop Good.
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Sharif Farrag (b. 1993, Reseda, CA) merges classic ceramics styles with his own improvisational building techniques, representing his hybrid identities through clay. Farrag received a BFA from the University of Southern California in 2018 and is currently an MFA candidate in ceramics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was an artist in residence at Cal State Long Beach’s Center for Contemporary Ceramics from 2018 to 2020, and in 2019, he was awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
He has had several solo exhibitions at Los Angeles galleries, including François Ghebaly, in lieu, New Image Art, and gallery1993. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Jeffrey Deitch, New York; the 2020 Clay Biennial at Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Adams and Ollman, Portland; High Art, Arles; and Matthew Brown, Los Angeles. He is included in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, and the Rubell Museum in Miami. Farrag lives and works in Los Angeles.
Portrait photo by Sasha Douglas-Nares.
Big Dog (Guardian), 2021, Glazed stoneware, dimensions 40.5 × 29 × 26 inches. Photo by Genevieve Hanson; courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch Gallery.[ID: A sculpture of an anthropomorphized animal, with a snout and long ears. The animal is painted a greenish grey, with decorative dashes and dots. He is covered in ceramic floral shaped objects that also obscure a small boy the animal holds in a basket.]
Installation view of Sharif Farrag: Laugh in the Dark exhibition, 2019. François Ghebaly, Los Angeles. Photo by Robert Wedemeyer; courtesy of François Ghebaly, Los Angeles.[ID: An in-gallery photograph, displaying several sculptures. The centralized sculpture is a human-sized vessel balanced on three hairy legs resembling that of a primate. The vessel itself, huge and urn-like, is green with graphic images painted on its sides. It is covered in chains, barbed rope, and small figures.]
Installation View of Sharif Farrag: Drawings and Vessels exhibition, 2020. Photo by Paul Salveson; courtesy of François Ghebaly, Los Angeles.[ID: An in-gallery photograph, displaying seven sculptures atop a U-shaped table. The sculptures are vessels ranging in size and bursting with organic shapes. Many look as if they are covered in flora and fauna and others are so abstracted that the colorful shapes are unrecognizable at a distance.]