Sameer Farooq
The interdisciplinary practice of Sameer Farooq aims to create community-based models of participation and knowledge production in order to re-imagine a material record of the present. He investigates tactics of representation and enlists the tools of 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. Farooq’s work has been exhibited internationally and he has been awarded several grants from the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and the Europe Media Fund, as well as the Chalmers Fellowship (OAC) and the President’s Scholarship at the Rhode Island School of Design. In the summer of 2015, Farooq and Mirjam Linschooten participated in an artist residency at the Blackwood Gallery which resulted in the exhibition The Figure in the Carpet.