Sameer Farooq

With a versatile approach that shifts between sculpture, photography, documentary film, and anthropological methods, Sameer Farooq investigates strategies of representation to expand the ways through which museums have looked at the past through traditional forms of collection, interpretation and display. The result is often a collaborative work which counterbalances how dominant institutions speak about our lives: a counter-archive, new additions to a museum collection, or a buried history made visible. Farooq foregrounds community-based models of knowledge production and an array of contemplative practices in order to suggest new ways of narrating our cultural histories.

Biography

Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. Born on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, he studied Anthropology at McGill University, Montreal, before moving to China to work at the Canadian Embassy Beijing. Farooq continued his education in art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including Susan Hobbs (2022); Koffler Gallery (2021); Patel Brown Gallery (2021); Lilley Museum, Nevada (2019); Aga Khan Museum (2017); Institute of Islamic Culture, Paris (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Turkey (2015); Artellewa, Cairo (2014); and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2011). Reviews dedicated to his work have been published by Art Forum, Canadian Art, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, and C Magazine. Sameer Farooq currently lives and works in Toronto.

Recent exhibitions

2022	Tu m'enveloppes et je te contiens, Group exhibition, Fonderie Darling ≠, Two-person exhibition, Susan Hobbs, Toronto The Museum Visits a Therapist, HotDocs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto
2021	A Heap of Random Sweepings, Solo exhibition, Koffler Gallery, Toronto Artifacts on the Horizon, Group exhibition, Patel Brown, Toronto Stories We Tell Ourselves, Group exhibition, The Foreman Gallery, Sherbrooke Vessel, Group exhibition, Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington, USA
2019	A bag is a veil is a pillar, Solo exhibition, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto BOOP Museum, Solo exhibition, Clarington Art Center, Bowmanville Terma, Solo exhibition, The Liley Museum, Reno, USA Days of Reading: Beyond This State of Affairs, Solo exhibition, Plugin ICA, Winnipeg