After Dinner
- Artist: Farah Al Qasimi
- Date: 2018
- Medium: Photograph, inkjet print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 1010 × 732 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is "After Dinner" by Farah Al Qasimi. The 2018 photograph is a bright, inkjet print that captures an interior bursting with color, shimmering textiles and bold patterns. The room feels like a stage where everyday domesticity turns into a performance. Al Qasimi photographs spaces in her relatives’ homes in the United Arab Emirates, using vivid decoration to comment on gendered social roles and the lingering influence of colonial taste. The walls are saturated with patterned fabrics and metallic touches that echo a post‑colonial hangover, hinting at the British legacy that still shapes ideas of class and style. The image feels disorienting—geography is ambiguous, as if the viewer is standing in a liminal space between UAE and the United States. Faces are blurred or hidden behind smoke or fabric, underscoring a respect for privacy while still spotlighting personal presence. It’s a playful yet thoughtful snapshot of how material excess and cultural mixing create a unique, almost theatrical domestic landscape.
See it in person
After Dinner 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.
