Cherine Fahd facts for kids
Cherine Fahd is an Australian artist who creates amazing photography and video art. She also teaches visual communication at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Her artwork has been shown in many countries, including Australia, Israel, Greece, and Japan. She has received several awards and has had special art residencies in India and at Carriageworks in Sydney.
Early Life and Learning
Cherine Fahd was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1974. Her grandfather and his brothers moved to Australia from Lebanon in the 1950s. When she was 11 years old, her teacher took her class to an art exhibition. Cherine says that from that day on, art became her main focus. She even sometimes pretended to have dentist appointments to skip school and visit the art gallery!
She studied at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996. She first studied painting, but later became very interested in photography. She wanted to capture real moments and actions. She started working as a professional artist in the 1990s.
In 2003, she completed a Master's Degree in Fine Arts. She then decided to focus completely on photography. In 2016, she earned her PhD from Monash University. Today, she is an Associate Professor and Director of Photography at the University of Technology in Sydney.
She continues to create art in Sydney. She shares a studio in her backyard with her artist husband, their children, and their dog.
Cherine Fahd's Artworks
Cherine Fahd's photography first focused on everyday actions. Now, her work explores the difference between photos that are planned and those that happen naturally. She also makes people think about why we pose for pictures. Some of her art uses humor to look at ideas like who we are, our background, how we look, and how we hide things.
She often creates her art in a series of related works. One of her first series was about noses. In these photos, people's noses were wrapped in bandages, as if they had just had surgery. Other series she has shown since 2000 include Sleepers, Camouflage, and National Types of Beauty.
In 2003–2004, while in Paris, Cherine took photos of different people against a stone wall. There was a heat wave, and the city had sprinklers running. Her photographs show how different people reacted to the water.
In 2011, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Cherine led a special program. She shared her own fears and asked visitors to share theirs. She then made posters with text to show these fears.
For her series Shadowing Portraits (2014–2015), Cherine asked other photographers to pose for her. She asked each person to strike a pose. Then, she would copy their pose and stand right behind them. It looked like she was hiding herself, even though the photo was also of her. This series was part of her PhD work.
In 2016–2017, Cherine created the series You Look like.... This series included photographs of 12 men with beards. Two of the men were her brothers. Their mother often asked them to shave their beards because, as Lebanese men, she worried they might be mistaken for terrorists. Other photos in the series showed men from different backgrounds. Cherine's series makes us think about how we judge people based on how they look.
In 2018, Cherine Fahd was invited to be part of The National: New Australian Art. This is a big art show presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Cherine showed a series of photographs at Carriageworks called Apókryphos. This is a Greek word meaning secret or unknown. The photos were from her family's old collection, taken in 1975. They show the sadness of a family funeral and also what the Lebanese-Australian community looked like in the 1970s. Cherine added notes to each photo, explaining what was happening and sharing her own feelings. These notes are a very important part of the artwork. The funeral happened when Cherine was two years old. The photos and her notes share both public images and private feelings of sadness. The people looking at the art become very involved. The person who passed away is never seen, only the people who are mourning. Cherine even used her childhood names for her grandmother, the widow, in her notes. After being shown at Carriageworks, the Art Gallery of New South Wales bought the series for their collection.
Awards and Support
Cherine Fahd has received many awards and grants that help artists create new work:
- She received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts in 1999, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2014, 2016, and 2018.
- 2003: She was given the Moya Dyring Studio from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This award provided a two-month stay in a studio apartment in Paris.
- 2004: Cherine won the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts Photography Award.
- 2005: She received the NSW Women and Arts fellowship from Arts NSW (New South Wales).
- 2010: She won The National Photography Prize. This prize is given every two years by the MOMA Art Foundation, which supports the Murray Art Museum (MOMA) in Albury, Australia. She won for her series Hiding – Self Portraits (2009–2010).
- 2018: She was awarded the Asialink Creative Exchange residency to Varanasi, India. While there, she studied how people's facial expressions show who they are.
- 2019: She was chosen for The National: New Australian Art exhibition again.
- 2019: She was awarded an artist in residence position at The Clothing Store at Carriageworks.
Art Collections
Cherine Fahd's artworks are held in the collections of several important museums:
