Exhibition

Koffler Gallery, 2021
Photo documentation by Toni Hafkenscheid

A Heap of Random Sweepings is an immersive installation of new and recent sculptural, photo and print works choreographed as a deeply poetic reflection on the fraught and violent histories of encyclopaedic museum collections, their colonial origins, structures and impulses.

With a versatile approach that may combine or shift between visual art processes, documentary filmmaking and writing as well as anthropological methods, Farooq investigates strategies of representation to supplant the injustices and inadequacies museums have historically perpetuated through traditional forms of collection, interpretation and display. He foregrounds community-based models of participation and knowledge production, proposing counter-archives, new additions to a collection, or buried histories made visible, in order to offset how dominant institutions speak about our cultural histories and our lives.   

In A Heap of Random Sweepings, Farooq creates a series of displays that elicit prolonged attention, asking us to look intently and to spend time in the presence of these artworks as well as the absences they evoke. Raising questions about provenance and repatriation, the objects and images assembled in this installation articulate new visions that repurpose the emptied spaces of museums devoid of their spoils.

The installation’s physical arrangement changes periodically throughout the run of the show, emphasizing the fluidity of thought necessary for shifting entrenched practices. Submerged in an audio environment composed by Farooq’s collaborator, Gabie Strong (Los Angeles, CA), the artworks offer themselves as tools for meditation and self-reflection. Lyric captions contributed by poet Jared Stanley (Reno, NV) unsettle the rigidly prescribed narratives of didactic labels. The assembly guides us to interrogate our relationship with art objects and to ponder on an intrinsic potential that transcends their aesthetic value.

Considering the possibilities offered by sustained contemplation and engagement, Farooq invites visitors to envision what a museum might become through the mechanics of restitution, what it may shift to collect and document, and what kind of experiences it could nurture.

Artist Info

Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. His interdisciplinary practice investigates tactics of representation and enlists the tools of sculpture, installation, photography, documentary filmmaking, writing and the methods of anthropology to explore various forms of collecting, interpreting, 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. With exhibitions at institutions around the world including the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The British Library (London), the Institute of Islamic Culture (Paris), Vicki Myhren Gallery (Denver), the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Maquis Projects, (Izmir), Trankat (Tétouan, Morocco), Sol Koffler Gallery (Providence), Artellewa (Cairo), and Sanat Limani (Istanbul), Farooq received several awards from The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Europe Media Fund, as well the President’s Scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design. Reviews and essays dedicated to his work have been included in C Magazine, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, Canadian Art, and others. He also appeared on the 2018 Sobey Art Award long list, Canada’s preeminent art award.