Tahir Carl Karmali

Tahir Carl Karmali (b. 1987 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, installation, papermaking, sculpture and sound. His body of work finds its roots in themes of identity and how economic, geopolitical and social systems shape those identities. Concentrating thematically on migration, labour, belonging, landscape and geology, his work speaks to our relations to, and the histories embedded in, the built environment and urban space. Focusing on materiality, Karmali’s practice foregrounds vernacular design and engages with concepts of belonging, migration and labour in a capitalist and consumption-centred culture.

Karmali received a BBA in Marketing and Communications from Les Roches, Switzerland, in 2009, and an MFA in Digital Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2015. Since 2019, he has taught design and sculpture at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

Karmali explores archival materials to create intimate, multi-layered memorabilia. In his PAPERwork series, he uses handmade paper pulped from photocopied government-issued identification documents to explore narratives and concepts inspired by communities affected by a shifting global economy. The series questions notions of authenticity and nationality that govern borders and further inculcate practices of neocolonialism, ultimately examining bureaucratic methods of control exerted over individuals and nations.

His current work focuses on the built environment and landscape, the erasure and invisibility of certain groups and histories, and the performance of social hierarchy within the construction industry. As the artist explains, ‘My practice overall is one that looks at community first, then materials.’ Grounded in observation and engagement, his work considers how histories and identities are erased, preserved and transmitted through both communities and material culture.

Karmali has exhibited widely, including at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Kunsthal Rotterdam, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, The Shed, New York, Cleveland Museum of Art, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, and Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi. He has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, and has undertaken residencies at The Watermill Center, Montello Foundation, Triangle Arts Association, Pioneer Works, Trestle Gallery, MacDowell and BRIC.

Contributors: Favour Ritaro (The Distance Between Yesterday and Tomorrow), Bulelwa Kunene (A Gathering) and Fadzai Muchemwa (Traces and Transitions)

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