Tahir Carl Karmali (Kenyan, born 1987)
Paradise III, 2019
Unsigned
Acrylic screen print on organic natural dip-dyed canvas
167.6 × 991 cm
KES 600,000 – 800,000
(US$)4,800 – 6,400
Provenance: From the artist’s collection
Sold KES 587,000

The work of Nairobi-born and Brooklyn-based artist Tahir Carl Karmali spans photography, installation, papermaking, sculpture, and sound and concentrates thematically on migration, landscape/geology, labour, and belonging. His work has been exhibited at Circle Art Agency, Nairobi; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Cleveland Museum of Art: Kunsthal Rotterdam; The Shed, Cleveland Museum, Leslie Lohman, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, among others. Karmali was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency (both 2019–20).

Recently he was an artist in residence at The Watermill Center (2020) and Montello Foundation (2021). He was previously an Artist-in-Residence at Triangle Arts Association, Pioneer Works, Trestle Gallery, the MacDowell Colony, and BRIC. He is in the Dakar Biennale 2024 and has a solo exhibition at Management Gallery New York.

This work is from a series he made while researching his mother’s Seychellois heritage.