Using photography, video, and sound installation, Farihah Aliyah Shah engages photographic history and explores identity formation through the colonial gaze, race, connectivity to land, and collective memory. Shah was the 2019 recipient of the John Hartman Award, long listed in 2022 for the New Generation Photography Award, and the 2023 recipient of the CCI x WOPHA Fellowship at the Perez Art Museum of Miami. She is a member at Gallery 44 – Centre for Contemporary Photography and Women Photograph, an organization that advocates for female and nonbinary photojournalists. She is the co-founding member of Mast Year Collective. Shah has exhibited internationally in Asia, Europe, and North America. She holds a BHRM from York University and a BFA in photography with a minor in integrated media from Ontario College of Art and Design University.
Land of Water and Sugar Cane
Land of Water and Sugar Cane
Augusta Savage Gallery
By Farihah Aliyah Shah
November 20 – December 9
Reception: November 20
UMass graduate student Farihah Aliyah Shah embarks on an exploration of cultural, land, and personal memory. Shah was born in Canada and is of Guyanese heritage. She uses photography, video, and sound installation to trace her connections to Canada and Guyana while engaging in postcolonial inquiry. Shah brings together photographic documentation of Victoria Village — a community in the Demerara region of Guyana founded by formerly enslaved people — along with family artifacts, archival papers, and research into Guyana’s complex national history. She examines identity formation through the colonial gaze, race, connection to land, and collective memory.
Farihah Aliyah Shah