Friday Gallery is honored to present our Winter 25 season with Iraqi artist Halim Al-Karim, ON HOPE: Inanna's Revolution. Join us for an opening reception with the artist on Friday February 14th, from 6 to 9pm. Al-Karim’s work explores the fierce power of mythic beauty across time and culture — a force of sensual and spiritual nourishment that gives birth to hope. This is not gentle softness, but the electric vibrancy of untamed beauty that tears at our flesh, pierces our gaze, and stands in defiance of injustice with proud hands on hips. Through beauty, we feast on hope. Halim Al-Karim’s large-scale photography honors the Sumerian mythology of Inanna, who suffered in the depths of darkness, only to return to the fullness of her power with a glint of garnet in her eyes. Al-Karim is an alchemist blending vintage techniques with experimental practices — turning mirrors into collodion wet plates, printing with raw minerals, and building with a custom camera over nine feet tall. His final images become both tangible and opaque, confrontational yet soft, intimately close and veiled far away. Escaping political persecution during the Iraq war, Al Karim found refuge in the desert, where the kindness of an elderly Bedouin woman sustained him, hid him, and fed him. Her face became an enduring symbol of hope. Like a memory softened by time, it lingers on the edges of clarity, blurred and just out of reach. This moment came to define his creative practice. The thirst of a man trying to remember water, forever laying down at the altar of beauty. Selected as Iraq’s representation at the Venice Biennale, Halim Al-Karim’s relationship to his homeland has come full circle. At its core, his work is about the hope that no matter what one has endured, the feeling, the smell, and the taste of beauty can still be held. Without hope, we only just exist. Each Friday season is anchored in a rotating theme, with the art, fashion, and objects curated under a shared spirit. For “ON HOPE,” we pair Al-Karim’s work with brands that explode with the energy of otherworldly beauty and abundance - from the animistic sculptures pulsing with life from Lebanese designer Tamara Barrage, to a line of hand-embroidered apparel from artisan Lahore brand Color Coded Crime, to the fiery spirit of parandi designers Ziddi reimagining heritage craft. For Inanna, to hell and back, Friday Gallery RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/iAZqbuEoJ8ZWJHwMkp2k _________ Halim Al Karim is a contemporary Iraqi artist known for his strategically blurred and altered photographs. Born in 1963 in Najaf, Iraq, he went on to study at the Baghdad Academy of Fine Arts and later the Gerrit Reitveld Academie in Amsterdam. His work was featured in the Iraqi Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale – the first Iraqi Pavilion in 36 years. His work is in the collections of major museums including the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art in Doha, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Saatchi Collection in London, Darat Al Funun in Amman, L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Artron Art Museum in China and Yinchaun MoCA in China. He lives and works between Denver, CO and Dubai, UAE. About FRIDAY Friday exists to encourage the discovery of rising creative voices from the Global South, curating art, objects, and editions from across the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond. The space blends an art gallery with a design concept store to create a seasonal platform celebrating brown artists, designers, and artisans. Each Friday season is anchored in a rotating theme, with the art, fashion, and object curation bound together in a shared spirit. From Pakistani minimalism, to the surrealist visions of feminist Arabic photographers, to queer gothic brujas in Mexico, Friday peels back old divides to celebrate the cultural voices of tomorrow. Connect at thefridaygallery.com and @thefriday.gallery on instagram.