Sameer Farooq

Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. With a versatile approach that shifts between sculpture, photography, documentary film, and anthropological methods, he investigates strategies of representation to expand the ways through which museums have looked at the past through traditional forms of collection, interpretation and display. 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. 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.

Sameer Farooq has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (2023), Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2023), Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax (2023), Fonderie Darling, Montréal (2022); Susan Hobbs, Toronto (2022); Koffler Gallery, Toronto (2021); Patel Brown, Toronto (2021); Lilley Museum, Reno (2019); Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2017); Institute of Islamic Culture, Paris (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Izmir (2015); Artellewa, Cairo (2014); and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (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. He is an alumni of the prestigious Bemis Center Residency and has been longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2024, 2019, 2018 and 2017).

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Recent exhibitions

*Chapitre III* - Group exhibition
From April 4 to May 25, 2024

*Cheek by Jowl*
From October 19 to November 18, 2023

Selected Artworks

Request the list of available works