Anhar Salem

Le Fresnoy, France

Anhar Salem (Saudi Arabia, 1993) was born in Jeddah, and has a multi-ethnic background (Yemeni and Indonesian). She has studied IT at Arab Open University and at Le Fresnoy Studio in France. As an autodidact video artist, her work attempts to explore, document, and open new public and private spaces associated with themes such as everyday life, the body, and social media. By using her camera phone, and often working collaboratively with her subjects/characters, she improvises with new forms of communication that critique video as a medium and explore processes around the marginalisation of people and their images.

LOVE & REVENGE

France | 2022 | 31’

A teenage girl tries to escape her reality using an Instagram filter, but the desire to be free by existing as an image collapses when she lost control over the avatar. From a distance in Tourcoing, Anhar casts her niece Doody and her sister Ansam to shoot with their phones and do a re-enactment of their social media practices and the cyber attack they had, exploring and hovering between private and public life in Saudi Arabia.

FIDCampus