Roxy Farhat
Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 3 November 2025–27 April 2026
Roxy Farhat is an artist and climate activist based in Stockholm. Born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in Sweden, she was educated in both Sweden and the United States. Her practice primarily centres on video and performance, drawing on personal experience to address themes such as capitalism’s influence on public and private space, social prejudice, and the role of art as a political force. Her works are characterised by an absurd, kitschy humour underpinned by political conviction.
Roxy Farhat
Collaboration is a vital aspect of her practice and includes music videos, scenography, participatory projects and radio theatre created in collaboration with artists, musicians and directors such as The Knife, Zhala, Dimen Abdulla and Göran Hugo Olsson.
Since 2023, she has been one of the spokespersons for the climate movement Återställ Våtmarker (Restore the Wetlands). Her involvement in this radical non-violent movement, and her participation in acts of civil disobedience, have led her to question the role of art at a time when the very foundations of human life are threatened by the climate crisis. These reflections culminated in a full-scale artistic and personal crisis, realised as a performance at Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö in December 2024. In the closing act of the piece, she bade farewell to her artistic practice, expressing the hope of finding a form of creation truly in dialogue with the crises we face.
“With great sorrow I let go of the artist I have been, but I do so in the hope of finding a way of creating that is radical in the fullest sense.”
During her residency at IASPIS, she will explore what a contemporary radical practice might look like – one that meaningfully responds to the existential crises of our time.
Roxy Farhat holds a BFA from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm, and an MFA in New Genres from UCLA, USA. Her recent exhibitions include Vi bygger det här samhället tillsammans (We Build This Society Together), Österängens Konsthall (2025); DURATIONAL SPACE #5, Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö (2024); The Impersonal Verb and the Hidden Subject, La Capella, Barcelona (2023); Still Interested in This Image?, Galleri Verkligheten, Umeå (2022) and Skånes konstförening, Malmö (2021); Vår himmel röd (Our Sky is Red), Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg (2020).
Her works are represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Moderna Museet Malmö and the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts. In 2023 she released her first feature film, an adaptation of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, made in collaboration with Göran Hugo Olsson.