Nadine Faraj Canada, b. 1977

Born in Montreal in 1977, Nadine Faraj lives and works in New York.

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal and completed her master’s degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has also taken courses at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and studied art history and philosophy at Marianopolis College in Montreal.

She has received awards such as the Susan Levin-Woods and Canada Millennium fellowships. Faraj paints portraits with a strong sexual undertone. She works in watercolor using the wet-on-wet technique, which has the effect of diluting her expressionist-style paintings into a certain abstraction. The chromatic intensity of her palette reinforces the eroticism of her work. The artist allows psychological and emotional dimensions to come through in her work; these are very present in the sense of humanity she bestows upon her subjects, drawn from the world of pornography.

Nadine Faraj has participated in group exhibitions at the New York galleries Anna Zorina and Open, among others, and her solo exhibitions include those held at Anna Zorina, Articule, and Joyce Yahouda in Montreal; the Helen Day Art Center in Vermont; Nuit Blanche in Toronto; and the Dubai International Art Symposium. Her work can be found in private collections in Montreal, New York, Dubai, and Lyon.