LIGHTBOX: A weed is a plant in the wrong place by Adham Faramawy

Two dancers in a field of fireweed are magnified across Chapter’s entrance in this artwork by Adham Faramawy. One dancer stands mirroring the plants tall stems and the other touches its pink petals.

Often considered a weed, fireweed is a self-seeding plant that has the extraordinary ability to grow on burnt ground.

In positioning marginalised bodies within and tending to this landscape with text that reads, ‘a weed is a plant in the wrong place’, Adham is destabilising ideas of rootedness and ‘the natural’. Who decides who belongs and who is welcome?

For Adham, nature is a site of refuge and resilience, a transgressive space of resistance where plants thrive despite displacement and weeds withstand hostile environments.

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About the artist

Adham Faramawy is an artist of Egyptian descent based in London. Their work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation, photography, print and painting engaging with concerns of materiality, touch, the body and toxicity to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalised communities. Faramawy has screened work at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, London and the Serpentine Gallery, London. They were shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award 2017 and 2021. In 2023 they were the Frieze Artist Award recipient.