Sameer Farooq
Cheek by Jowl
October 19 to November 18, 2023
Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Cheek by Jowl, an exhibition of new works by Sameer Farooq that seeks to engage viewers in a poetic reflection on cultural production across regions through collage. Stemming from a research period at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the works in Cheek by Jowl are grounded in Farooq’s signature fascination with the idea of compressing or flattening both time and space. Historical artifacts from the years 100-500 CE, a period of great cultural production and the robust exchange of objects and ideas from across the globe, are overlapped with commonplace items found during Farooq’s daily commute to the museum. With a sustained focus on the way that museums write and locate history through the lenses of taxonomy, plunder, and colonial impulses, these works exemplify one way to bring seemingly disparate objects back into conversation with each other. Intricate, uncanny, and at times even humorous, each new arrangement serves to remind us that all objects are in a constant state of becoming, and that cross-pollination has always existed. With Cheek by Jowl, Farooq is doubling down his efforts to rebuild severed ties between objects, regions, and cultures, and create space to reflect on ideas of cohesion and fracture, entanglement, and erasure. In these choreographed entanglements of present and past, historical artifacts become intertwined with their current environments, reminding us that they are as alive and relevant today as any object produced in its time.
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.
