Blanket Shop
- Artist: Farah Al Qasimi
- Date: 2019
- Medium: Photograph, inkjet print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 1002 × 758 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Blanket Shop” by Farah Al Qasimi. Created in 2019 as an inkjet print on paper, the work is a snapshot from Al Qasimi’s “Back and Forth Disco” series that captured everyday scenes in New York’s local communities and small businesses. The image pulls you into a shop lined with textiles, a place where the ordinary becomes visually striking.
Al Qasimi isolates the quiet beauty of moments that usually go unnoticed amid the city’s visual noise. The scene feels simultaneously familiar and disorienting—geographic clues are blurred, and the line between public space and private interior dissolves. This sense of in‑betweenness echoes her other photographs of UAE homes, where the heavy, patterned blankets and bold décor speak to a post‑colonial aesthetic and the mingling of cultural references.
The print invites you to pause, to notice the layers of texture and the way light dances across the fabric, reminding us that even in a bustling city, small, intimate spaces can reveal deep, resonant stories.
See it in person
Blanket Shop is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
