Nasrah Omar (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, AR/VR and collage. Through imaginative world-building, her work probes narratives of visibility, connection and re-generation through the cultivation of affirming paracosms. Interlacing layered threads from the South Asian diaspora, ecology, ritual, folklore, material culture and technology, she constructs fantastical realms of healing with pan-psychic and universalist strands. Mediated through carefully crafted, lurid tableaus, Nasrah's work explores pathways to de-colonial futurities; traversing the realms of the sensory, simulated and sublime.
Nasrah was a recipient of the inaugural Image Equity Fellowship (2022), her work has previously been exhibited at Pioneer Works, The Photographers' Gallery, PH Museum, Houston Center for Photography, and ICP. She holds a BFA in Photography from School of Visual Arts and lives and works in Lenapehoking (Queens, NY).
PROJECT : IN CONTINUUM (A CIRCLE OF INVOCATION)
In continuum (a circle of invocation) is an invitation to reconvene with ancestral threads and honor the convergences. It entails casting a magic circle––to create multi-sensory altarpieces as portals of important histories from the global South, leading to a pathway towards healing and re-enchantment with anti-colonial frameworks. Through extensive research, the integration of photography, installation, a zine and website, the project involves the embedding of blooming altars encoded with symbols and stories of a pantheon of gender expansive, female-identifying and divine feminine figures to honor my South Asian community’s multifaceted heritage and by expanding the circle outward to hold space for the global NYC community’s diasporas to feel seen and connected. Tethered to these altars, the zine-making circles (can be done virtually and IRL) will honor our collective histories and enable dissemination of visuals and information to rewild built environments honoring these divine ancestral links, by learning about guerilla urban gardening guides with seed bomb recipes etc. A linked website will further provide a space for others to share and exchange resources, and cultivate their own enchanted ecosystems and build upon the network of ideas.
