A Heap of Random Sweepings

Sameer Farooq’s major solo exhibition that tackles the fraught and violent histories of anthropological and encyclopaedic museum collections, their colonial origins, structures and impulses.

Type of Exhibition: Art

The Koffler Gallery is proud to present the first major solo exhibition in Toronto by multidisciplinary artist Sameer Farooq.

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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.

Image at top: Sameer Farooq, Restitution Series (Bones), 2020, Ink jet print on Hahnemühle Photo Gloss 260, Dibond mounted, 26” x 40”. Courtesy of the Artist.

Presented by:

Koffler Centre of the Arts

A Kultura Collective Member

Start Date:

September 25, 2021

End Date:

November 14, 2021

Gallery Hours: Wed–Sun, 12–5 PM

Downtown Toronto

Artscape Youngplace
180 Shaw St., # 104-105
Toronto, ON
M6J 2W5

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A Heap of Random Sweepings

Sameer Farooq’s major solo exhibition that tackles the fraught and violent histories of anthropological and encyclopaedic museum collections, their colonial origins, structures and impulses.

Type of Exhibition: Art

Presented by:

A Kultura Collective Member

Start Date:

September 25, 2021

End Date:

November 14, 2021

Downtown Toronto

Artscape Youngplace 180 Shaw St., # 104-105 Toronto, ON M6J 2W5

Accessibility

If accessibility options not listed, please contact the venue to confirm

Related Exhibitions

Gallery

October 1, 2026

to January 29, 2027

Gallery

September 7, 2026

to August 31, 2027

Gallery

September 24, 2026

to November 8, 2026

Gallery

September 24, 2026

to December 13, 2026

Artscape Youngplace
180 Shaw St., # 104-105
Toronto, ON
M6J 2W5