Biography

In her photographic works, Lamya Gargash explores interiors as a framework for revealing issues of culture and identity in the UAE, set within the context of rapid external change.

The Majlis, exhibited in the 2009 Sharjah Biennial, is a series of photographs focusing on the room inside the home where people traditionally gather to socialise. Her images reveal the spatial formalities of the majlis, how individuality is expressed through each subject's interpretation of this domestic space and how the evidence of globalisation and urban change is manifest within it. The photographs document these interiors as moments, frozen in time.

Gargash was the featured artist in the UAE's first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2009) where she presented her photographic series Familial, a visual play on the notion of hospitality and the politics of interior design. Her work also featured in Dubai Next, at the Vitra Museum, Weil Am Rein, Germany (2008) and in My Father’s House, a touring exhibition organised by the British Council (2008). Her series of photographs of abandoned or semi-abandoned rooms, titled Presence, was the subject of her first artist's book published in 2008 (Third Line Gallery, Dubai).

Born in 1982 in Dubai, Gargash received a BSc in Visual Communication from the American University of Sharjah, UAE (2004) and an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London (2007). In addition to photography, Gargash also works with video. In 2004 she was awarded First Prize in the Emirates Film Festival and the Ibdaa Special Jury Award for her film, Wet Tiles. Gargash lives and works in Dubai.

October 2010