Abid Farhan




Abid Farhan (b.2001, Dhaka, Bangladesh) is a London-based artist working across painting, photography, moving image and sound. Farhan's practice explores the psychogeographic relationship between people and place, considering how diasporic lives and memories are soaked into the surface of our environments.

Drawing on his lived experience of Bangladeshi diasporic identity, migration and architectural theory, Farhan considers how multiple truths can co-exist, the conflicting identities held within a person between two countries and places reflect the sense of self.

Farhan’s work is concerned with pushing the formal qualities of his mediums. Simultaneously, he folds in flickers of imagery and feelings, from his environment and past, to create codified works with a tinge of surreality. Through this, he slightly shifts the angle at which viewers perceive, creating a condition to encounter the familiar in a new form.

Art-making for Farhan is a way to draw from his past stories to be in contact with them. Through expressing those stories in new forms and mediums, the intention is to understand himself in a new way and create gaps through which the perceived distance between people of differing backgrounds is collapsed, and a condition to find commonality is created.

Recent presentations include The Gaps - Listening Session, Harlesden High Street (2026), Our voices under this surface, TURF Projects (2025)


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Painting and Visual arts
Memory collages
Studies after Frank Auerbach
Our voices under this surface

Music


Video 


Photography 

A dream in details
At my feet 


At my feet: studies in looking close | In progress work | 2026

At my feet is an in-progress work consisting of precise and geometric photos of objects on the pavement. The notion of this work is to challenge perceptions of beauty and what we hold to be aesthetically valuable. 

Traditionally, we look to thoughtfully curated and designed interior spaces and buildings, made from exquisite materials and fine-tuned detailing, as examples of what good design is. However, I feel this is exclusionary because not every community or area has access to this level of design knowledge or resources to pull this off. A hierarchy gets created where these newer, shinier, cutting-edge spaces are at the top and then spaces such as Uncle's corner shop or the local hairdresser or the chicken shop become aesthetically worthless. They may not be new and shiny, but they hold years of memories and are examples of where the community has converged time and again; they provide something that is needed, but most importantly they feel accessible. The design does not exclude. 

The pavement itself is a piece of infrastructure that arguably is given little thought, unless it is majorly damaged and therefore impedes on people's ability to walk across it unconsciously. Within the frame of our eyesight, the pavement appears large and sprawling, and objects on it are rubbish to be thrown away. While not every object on the pavement is something I photographed, I observe it searching for something of interest: a mark, object, patina, and texture, and within the bounds of the photographic frame precisely capture that moment. Straight down, straight lines and a tight composition. Therefore, the random object on the pavement transcends itself. The underlying rhythm of line, shape, geometry and colour rises to the surface. Through slightly shifting the way these objects are seen and read, they become worthy of aesthetic merit. This is my metaphor for how we can shift our perception to find beauty in the mundane and the details, how slow observation and wondering reveal to us the hidden beauty of a place. Just like how the worn-out patina of the high street shops can seem ugly, underneath it exists a complex and colourful existence of life. 

Photos taken on smartphone