Photography by Ryder Griffith (@aesthetic_griff)

Clothing by Crush Studios (@crush.studio) and We Who Prey (@wewhoprey)

 

Farah is a visual artist, creative writer, and model from Cleveland, Ohio. In her work, she explores memory through text, ephemera, and layering. You can find her on Instagram at @farahsayedart.

 

What’s your background as a visual artist?

I’ve enjoyed visual art throughout my entire life. I have training in portrait art, as well as printmaking. Printmaking has allowed me to explore layering, mix techniques, and think critically about composition. I love that printmaking encompasses so many different processes, from screenprinting to etching, each of which produces its own unique effects. Learning these techniques really opened up my eyes as for what I could achieve.

 

 

Tell us about your artistic identity.

Finding my identity as an artist has taken many years and is a continual journey. In the transition from high school to college, I shifted away from observational work and moved towards representing personal experience. Expressing my identity and reflecting on how I remembered the past required a level of vulnerability and introspection that was intimidating at first. However, my life story is what I know best. My past, my emotions, and my identity are what I can convey most strongly and strikingly. 

 

 

 

How has your creative process evolved over time?

I have been incorporating mindfulness into my work over the past few years. With visual art, I have been leaning into mixed media and collage, taking a more abstract direction. I pull pages from magazines, mix a few colors of paint, and piece it all together. I trust my intuition by letting the piece develop as I create it. I incorporate anything lying around me, like a receipt, page of a notebook, nail polish – really anything that speaks to me. After the paint dries, I add final touches with a pen or marker.

Despite the lack of planning, the final piece reflects my current state of mind, a memory, or the particular mood I am trying to explore. There’s something about letting the colors, shapes, textures, and words come together on their own. It works.

 

 

What has inspired your exploration of other kinds of creative media?

People assume that I have a wide range of interests (creative writing, visual art, fashion, …) but in reality, self-expression underlies my relationship to all of these things. I use art as a tool to tell my story and to create beautiful things for others to enjoy. Sometimes that’s a poem, but other times it’s a photograph or a painting.

 

 

Can you tell us about your journey in modeling?

Modeling was something that I never saw myself doing. It felt distant and exclusive, and I had no connections to the modeling or fashion worlds.

Towards the end of my undergrad at Penn, I participated in a couple of photoshoots for arts magazines on campus. I enjoyed engaging in something so different from my day-to-day as a student. I thought I would explore modeling further and see if it was something I wanted to pursue.

I freelanced in Philly for about a year, working for trade at first to gain experience. I’m thankful for the generous creatives and now friends that provided these opportunities to me. Looking back, my earlier images could have been more expressive and intentional, but it’s exciting to see how I’ve refined my abilities over now two years of modeling. I’ve grown to love the process and community of creatives around me. It’s something I want to keep in my life moving forward. 

 

 

You’ve talked a little bit about mindfulness. Is that something that you incorporate into your modeling work?

I’m not sure if this is a unique perspective, but I experience modeling as an inherently mindful activity. When I’m on set, I am away from technology for a few hours. I don’t even touch my phone. I am also aware of my body and its positioning in space, which is not something that I, or most people, practice in our day-to-day lives. I appreciate the opportunity to exist in a protected space and be present in the moment.