Sol Collective has the honor of hosting the opening reception for Tigress Mind: A Space Peculiar, an art exhibition by Farah Billah. Farah is a contemporary artist from Sacramento whose main mediums of expression are painting, photography, and poetry. Colorful Bengali women, nature, plants, fruits, and animals inhabit her artworks. Culture, surrealism, Mughal paintings, love, and resilience inspire her to create.

“If I could explain the meaning of my paintings in words, they would be poems not paintings. Maybe this is what my brain looks like: a vast darkness with magic and strangeness floating about. I don't particularly try to focus on Bengali women, fruits, tigers, and plants, but those are the images that come out of my hands. They float in outer space, possibly because there is no space for them here on the ground. There's a kind of freedom in that lack of gravity. I embrace those images without too much question.

The Photo Series: Coriander Cats is my way of revealing to the viewer how I see the women I grew up with. I want to show the power in their duel Bangladeshi-American identities and the relentlessness of their independence. The series is a quiet way to combat social contradictions and cultural expectations through art.” Farah Billah