Farheen HaQ

2024

Community engaged stitching sessions, Lkwungen Territory, Victoria, BC and Haudenosanee Territory, Toronto, ON.  

I was inspired to create the two red veils after reading a poem by fourteenth century Sufi poet Kabir Ghoonghat ke pat khol or Lift up the veil. The veils are an invitation to those who read, stitch, or recite the poem to contemplate lifting the veils of illusion that keep us from connecting with the formless divine within us and the oneness of all beings.

The two veils were created as a community embroidery project, as a way to celebrate collective divinity and interconnectedness. Over several weeks people from various backgrounds—across ancestries, religions, genders, and age groups—to not only sew together but to in turn create new bonds, renew old relationships, and create art. During these embroidery circles, I would recite Kabir’s poem and invite reflection on the themes. Participants expressed that the embroidery circles were healing and provided an opportunity to reclaim ancestral knowledge and practice, especially skills rooted among the matriarchs of their ancestors.

The poem is presented on the veils in Hindi and in Punjabi to signal that Kabir’s words hold meaning across faith-based communities as he is revered by Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others. The red organza acts as the veil to be lifted in reverence and celebration of dissolving earthly illusions. The cotton thread reflects that even the ordinary encompasses divinity and oneness. The gold fringe frames the belief that humans and the nonhuman world are inherently divine and interdependent.

Gratitude to Harpreet Leekha for translating the poem to Punjabi and to the many hands and hearts who created this work:

Amna Ahmad, Nadia Ali, Bushra Asghar, Liz Bean, Serena Bhandar, Prakhar Bhardwaj, Gillian Booth, Gail Boulger, Matty Cervantes, Polly Chan, Asha Crocker, Supriya Crocker, Rita Kaur Dhamoon, Sophia Fatima, Afshan Haq, Cairo Haq, Chris Haq, Farida Haq, Claire Hutton, Crystal James, Yasmine Kandil, Ben Keep, Gagan Leekha, Harpreet Leekha, Olvie Li, Sophie Martin, Setareh Mohammadi, Mandeep Kaur Mucina, Nandi Mucina, Joshua Ngenda, Taylor Pannell, Inayah Patel, Samihah Patel, Corrie Peters, Anahita Ranjbar, Benjamin Cruz Reddy, Zameen Sabet, Jamison Schulz-Franco, Amena Sharmin, Regan Shrumm, Soobia Siddiqui, Meaghan Smith, Shanta Tayab, Nicola Watts, Macayla Yan

2024

The Reach Gallery, S'ólh Téméxw, Abbotsford, BC

Photos: Dale Klippenstein 

Rasam: Hamara Badan is a community ceremony where the artist invites family, friends, art community to performatively install 140 pounds of masoor ki daal (red lentils), the weight of the artist’s mother.  Drawing inspiration from the South Asian wedding procession, a drummer leads the procession consisting of 3 pairs of women carrying gold bundles between them, a red dupatta held aloft over them.  Each gold bundle holds 47 pounds of lentils that are carefully poured out onto a white cloth.  Kabir’s poem “Ghoonghat ke pat Khol re (Lift up your veil) is sung repeatedly for the duration of the ceremony/installation.  The words of Kabir inviting viewers and witnesses to remember the divine within each body resonates throughout the space and readies the gallery for this work honouring the maternal body.

Rasam: Hamara Badan installation ceremony was possible with the generosity of Aisha Haq, Fariha Ahmed, Gagan Leekha, Harpreet Leekha , Jenelle Pasiechnik, Matilde Cervantes, Minahil Bukhari, Pavan Leekha, Sandeep Johal.

Shukriya

2024

Two channel video projection

2023

Tseycum Village

Collaboration with Sarah Jim, the Jim Family and the Haq Family.

A landback restoration event, bringing Muslim and POC communities celebrating Eid to Tsecum Reserve to pull ivy on the Jim Family land.  In celebration of Eid and service to the land and devotion to spirit, community shared a feast of warm Indian food in the restored forest.  Stories were exchanged and a traditional Indian stick dance (dandiya) was performed to heal and give thanks to the land.

This event was coordinated by Farheen Haq, Sarah Jim, the Habitat Acquisition Trust and financially supported by Kikila Perrin.  Shukriya/HISKWE to the Jim Family for hosting us, to all our friends and community for helping to heal the land by pulling ivy, sharing your joy and feasting together.

2024

26x43 inches, velvet, gold thread embroidery, gold fringe/kiran, embroidered textile

Coast Salish design by Sarah Jim

Machine embroidery by Maheboob Malik

This janamaz combines Urdu and SENCOTEN text to acknowledge the intersection of my Muslim spiritual inheritance on Lekwungen and WSANEC lands. The Quran teaches us that we are made from clay. When I prostrate in prayers I give gratitude for the lands I have been nourished from and that have given birth to my family and continued spiritual practice.   The Coast Salish design on this prayer mat is by my friend, Tseycum artist Sarah Jim.  We have worked together on a youth mural and collaborated on Eid restoration events where we pull ivy to naturalize the forest and feast together with Muslim and Indigenous community. 

2024

29X53 inches

Prefab prayer mat, mirror, beads, gold kota pati, gold thread

Machine embroidery by Maheboob Malik

 This prayer mat is inspired by South Asian wedding aesthetics ( red, gold, gota, kiran/fringe, garlands, mirrorwork).

Embroidered on the janamaz is the word qabool which means acceptance. This is the word that is spoken during the nikaah/wedding vows in a Muslim wedding.  My mother is a wonderful example of accepting what life throws her way and being happy despite challenges.  Her courage to come to a new country in an arranged marriage required courage and acceptance.   In prayer, I connect internally and connect with my inner world. 

The mirror has a sehra (beaded veil) placed in front which is typical for a South Asian groom. What gets in the way of acceptance?  How do we connect with the divine within and marry that presence into our everyday life?

2024

26X45 inches

Prefab prayer mat, zardozi embroidery, mirrors

Hand embroidery by Bajran Ji

Machine embroidery by Maheboob Malik

This prayer mat has a line from a Kabir couplet embroidered in Urdu.

Kabir says everyone knows that many drops make up the ocean, but not everyone knows that the entire ocean is in a single drop. The prayer mat has always been a portal for me to contemplate connection and the vastness of my interior world. This janamaz has zardozi embroiderey, gota kiran and sheesha kaam/glass embroidery, incorporating elements of Indian and Islamic design.

2023

Campbell River Art Gallery, Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ territory, Campbell River, BC

Photos by Marc Kitteringham

Tea ceremony, plant medicine exchange in collaboration with Muneera Wallace, Cory Cliffe & Vanessa Sharkey

Paxala is the Kwakwakaʼwakw word for Healing, Shifa is the Arabic word for Healing.  Paxala Shifa was a gathering of Indigenous and South Asian communities coming together to share plant medicine and feast together.  Farheen collaborated with Ayurvedic practitioner Muneera Wallace to share the medicinal properties of plants used in chai (ginger, cardamom, pepper, cloves, ajwain, fennel) as they brewed chai in the gallery.  In exchange, Vanessa Sharkey and Cory Cliffe shared traditional Labrador tea  from Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ territory.  There was a feast of bannock, salmon, kicheree, samosas and laddoos alongside an exchange of songs and much laughter. 

Thank you to the Campbell River Art Gallery for their support of this joyous event, and to hereditary chief James Quatell for your welcome and stories.

2022

Single channel video projection

2022

Komok’s Territory

Collaboration with Emily Thiessen and Wachiay Studio.

This weekend retreat was organized for members of our intergenerational BIPOC artists who worked on the Coup des Deesses mural project.  

A two day gathering to ground ourselves to the territory through mindfulness and drawing activities along the Puntledge River.  Using the land and water wisdom to create designs, participants learned how to create prints using screenprinting technology.

2022

Single channel video

2022

Single channel video

2020

Single channel video

2020-2021

Lkwungen Territory, Esquimalt, BC

Co-founded by artists Farheen Haq, Kemi Craig and their teenagers Aya Behr and Aisha Haq.  Coup des Dessess is a public mural project created by an integenerational art collective of women, girls, femmes, and non-binary folks. .  Youth artists for this mural include: Aya Behr, Aisha Haq, Corvus Campbell, Kasîpinît Napoleon, Ivory Tatem, and Sara Vanderhasslet. 

This project was a collaborative process that was realized through community workshops which invited in artists/mentors: Farheen Haq, Kemi Craig, Serena Lukas Bhandar, Rita Dhamoon, Stephanie Papik, Sarah Jim (W̱SÁNEĆ), Emily Thiessen, & Olvie Li.  We learned from each other and shared our dreams for what a world led by strong women and honouring our feminine ancestors could look like.  Workshops included: quilt square making, collaging, drawing, writing, and learning about revolutionary women from South Asia.

Technical and design support from artists Emily Thiessen and Sarah Jim.

2019

copper plates, fishing weight, audio

collaboration with Charles Campbell and Yuxwelupton Qwal’qaxala (Bradley Dick)

(photos: Kyra Kordoski, Nicole Achtymichuk)

Begun as a series of wide ranging conversations between several friends, The Ground Above Us evolved into an examination of ways to come into better relation with the people and land of Lkwungen territory. Yuxwelupton Qwal’qaxala (Bradley Dick), whose ancestors and relatives have called this place home since time-in-memorial, soon became our confidant, guide and collaborator as we reflected on what it meant for us as racialized artists to be working on this ground.

The project methodology was simple. At a small, pebble beach near Meegan (Beacon Hill Park) and Mile Zero, the western terminus of Trans Canada Highway, we visited, told stories and shared food. Charles, Bradley and myself reflected on our families, the generational journeys that brought us to this place and the memories carried by the land, the water and our bodies. Our words were at times full of loss and grief; stolen bodies, fractured nations and stolen territories. But as we lay down our stories on the land, hope emerged in the form of deepening friendships, common understandings and a shared path forward.

Eventually others joined us, Namgis elder Gerry Ambers, WSÁNEC knowledge keepers Tiffany Joseph and Sara Jim, friends, family and community members. We gathered in groups to take plaster casts and copper impressions of the rocks, labouring silently in pairs with wet hands or blunt sticks to see what arrived for us as we got to know each crevice, ridge and mound. After, we shared our reflections, listened to stories from the land and ate together.

The copper impressions were later assembled into a suspended artwork and audio from our conversations on the shore, with sounds from the environment, edited into an immersive soundscape. A Lkwungen fishing weight, loaned by Bradley, anchored the installation. The gallery installation itself became an opportunity to invite a new community into the conversations we began on the beach.

2019

Land-based community conversations, presencing and art-making methodology on the shoreline of Lkwungen Territory.  

As part of Farheen, Charles Campbell and Bradley Dick’s colloborative project The Ground Above Us, we invited community groups to take plaster casts and copper impressions of the rocks and to meditate on our presence on Lkwungen Territory.  While labouring silently in pairs with plaster casts or making copper rubbings of the rocks we asked folks to see what arrived for them through being on the rocks. In dyads (pairs), participants listened deeply to each other and recorded their reflections.  These audio stories became part of the installation for The Ground Above Us.  After our process we shared our reflections and feasted together on the beach.   These community gatherings were meditative and intentional spaces of sharing how we arrive on the lands we occupy.

Project participants were: Gerry Ambers, Sarah Jim, Tiffany Joseph, Lorilee Wastasecoot, Gillian Booth, Michelle Jacques, Nicole Achtymichuk, Noam Sandford Blades, Denni Clement, Calvin Cairns, Isobel Campbell, Maia Castano, Matty Cervantes, Mex Cox, Mary Crocker, Odin Crocker, Tay Crocker, Lindsay Delaronde, Diana Gibson, Laura Gildner, Aisha Haq, Cairo Haq, Chris Haq, Kym Hines, Paula Jardine, Mundeep Kaur Mucina, Naomi Kennedy, Gagan Leekha, Devi Mucina, Khumalo Mucina, Nandi Mucina, Michelle Mulder, Dora Navarrete, Inayah Patel, Bo Peterson, Grant Peterson, Hector Perez, Hillary Quinn, Valerie Salez, Regan Shrumm, Eva Thompson, Jovis Thompson, Torin Thompson, Jennifer Van de Pol, Paul Walde, Andrea Walker-Collins, Chen Wang, Jesse and Noah.

The Ground Above us was supported by The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and UVic’s Legacy Galleries. Thank you Michelle and Gillian for your your trust and faith in this work.

2018

Lkwungen Territory, Victoria, BC

Inspired by Gandhi’s Salt March, an act of civil disobedience against Britain’s colonial laws in India, I created a ceremony and public march for the unveiling of the Fearless Collective mural “To Finally Heal” in summer 2018.  This mural brought together Indigenous and racilialized women to share stories of healing.  The Saltwater March offered a ceremony to locate ourselves within the Great Source of the ocean to offer our gratitude and march from the ocean to the site of the mural.   Participants were led in a guided meditation grounding on the land and connecting with the ocean.  Each participant dipped a part of a long length of blue cloth into the water and carried it in a moving water procession to the mural site.

2018

performative floor work, 140 pounds red lentils, fabric

photos: Mike Tan

hamara badan is a floorwork that is publicly installed as a performative gesture. I wrap 140 pounds of red lentils (the weight of my mother) in a white shroud. I ask witnesses to assist me in carrying my mother into the gallery space and to help me lay her down. The body is unwrapped and I attempt to wash away the narrow definitions of productivity and power that prevented me from seeing my mother when I was younger. I grieve the pain and losses incurred by internalized patriarchy in my lineage. I honour my mother’s body and the ways of knowing she holds.

2018

3 channel video installation

photo: Mike Tan

2016

Flux Media Gallery, Lkwungen Territory, Victoria, BC

Remembering Our Mothers was a participatory art, food and spirit gathering that emerged from a collaboration with Gerry Ambers (Namgis Nation, Alert Bay, BC).  I wanted to situate my exhibition within indigenous territory, history and ways of knowing, while calling upon my own tradition of ancestor respect and devotion.  Because the work in the show is about motherhood, Gerry and I created a ceremony that pulled in ideas from the exhibition with a chance for viewers to actively participate in connecting with ideas of the maternal, their ancestors and acknowledging the land we rest on as a nourishing body.

Remembering Our Mothers took place on Friday November 18, 2016 as a pre-opening event for the exhibition Being Home.   A circle of almost 80 people gathered to breathe together, acknowledge the land, call forth their ancestors, make an offering and feast on seasonal soup. Much gratitude to Gerry Ambers for the gift of friendship and the opportunity to work together and to MediaNet for supporting this event and for serving soup and drinks!

2016

syilx / Okanagan Territory, Kelowna, BC

In order to activate the site of my new exhibition and to bring my work out of the gallery, I created a public offering before the opening of my show at the Alternator Gallery.  Bringing my exhibition Being Home from Vancouver Island to the Okanagan, had me asking questions of how we honour the ways land nurtures us and how we can render visible the work of motherhood in all its forms.

Activating the extended tablecloth used in her performative video installations at the Alternator Gallery,  Farheen invited the community to gather around her dastarkhan - a long tablecloth placed on the ground in South Asia to share in gratitude and feasting.  

A gathering clustered around the tablecloth, sipping chai, various children created a mandala from materials by nearby Knox Mountain where I had taken my children to hike earlier that morning.  Acknowledging the land and the Syilx territory I was visiting, I invited people to join me in laying down on the tablecloth, guiding the group in a meditative reflection on the ways our bodies are nourished, our connection to maternal energies and our foremothers through the rise and fall of our bellies, and our bodies as expressions of the land living through us.  The tablecloth was spread with laying bodies, changing our orientation and our habitual way of coming into contact with the outdoor surroundings. 

** Many thanks to the Alternator staff for their support and to Crystal at ChaiBaba tea for the chai.

2015

My first memory of chai is drinking the warm spiced tea from my mother's saucer.   She would pour it into her saucer so it would cool and I would relish having this grown up drink, curled up next to my mother and her warm loving body. 

39 years later, the offering of chai is a tradition that continues in my life. I am the child, I am also now the mother, pouring chai not into a saucer, but into a bone china teacup. This delicate cup is a gift from my children’s British great-grandfather, made from buffalo bones.

The buffalo was a great provider: giving up its entire body for food, clothing and shelter to the people of the Plains.This teacup becomes a stand-in for the personal body and the collective body. The sacrificed, the sacrificial. The tea becomes the drum, calling out the stories of pain and abundance. My heart beating, my ears ready, I call forth the buffalo… 

And in the sound of the buffalos hooves I have visions: my father moving from India to Pakistan after a violent partition, my children’s feet pitter pattering on the floor safely here on Vancouver Island, the great loss of the indigenous peoples here, the trauma of my own family violence, my complicity in colonization and my own ancestors colonized. Without this complexity I could not find compassion.

Gratitude is part of any offering.  My art practice, where I mine personal history and trauma, offers me the possibility of transformation, from suffering and pain to healing and wholeness.

My deep gratitude to France Trepanier for inviting me to make an offering and for the ensuing conversation and friendship.  Many thanks to Kirk Schwarz for his creative and technical support.

2015

Series of 7 digital prints on aluminum dibond, 7 bedside tables, wood stands, paint

This photo series documents the relationship between the artist's body and her home.  Placing the photographs on bedside tables with drawers open, the artist invites viewers to reconsider the intimate spaces of home and body.

2015

Video diptych, HD projector, HD player

Projection size varies with room

The Table is a video diptych of gestures that emerge from my subconscious where I tap into a lineage of women who have come before: those who washed by hand, made rotis, ground up spices, swaddled, wrapped and comforted. By wrapping myself in the long tablecloth, I am the baby, the young child and also the grandmother wrapped in a white sari.

2015

Wood dresser, paint, LED monitor, HD player, extension cord

51”x20”x68”

Fold is a white dresser paired with a framed video monitor, seemingly hovering just above the top surface. The image on the screen shows the artist as she gathers, swaddles, compresses and embraces endless yardage of white fabric. Near the dresser there is a painted white chair, patiently watching this unfolding.

2015

Wood table, projector, HD player, extension cord

59”x33”x28”

Feast is a side lying table that yields to an image projected onto its surface – that of a belly landscape rising and falling at various intervals.  Stiff horizontal

legs push out behind the table.   The table could be resting or perhaps it has fallen.

2015

Wood chair, paint, tablet, extension cord

16”x15”x 33.5”

A collection of white painted wooden chairs with an embedded video in the bottom of an upturned chair. The looped video depicts a playful image of a grown woman sitting on a table swinging her legs – an excerpted gesture enacting and recalling a childhood memory. The other chairs are clustered around ‘bearing witness' to this gesture.

2015

digital video loop

Revelation is a video work that oscillates between the gestures of concealing and revealing the Arabic word Iqra, the first word revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. I re-imagine this Quranic story and place my own hands as the subject to receive and bury the word. In our present day the words of the Quranic revelation however variably and ornately written in calligraphy have been homogenized by dogmatic authorities and pushed towards a single interpretation. 
Iqra is a powerful commandment, encouraging followers to read and gain knowledge. Many stories of revelation become calcified into rigid structures. I deconstruct the single story in this video loop. By using crushed brick I reference buildings and ancient holy sites being blown up, whether by North Americans or the Taliban. In burying the word I enact the targeted dismantling of Islamic influence in Europe and North America as well as my own vacillating relationship with Islam. The residue of brick marks my hands like henna. Formally the video is composed to mimic the Canadian flag and I question notions of home and nationhood and the ground on which national identity is formed.

2011

4 channel video loop
Dimensions vary with room.

Confess Conceal takes as its starting point the metaphor of the curtain which symbolizes the segregation of various domains of our lives, be they public/private, inside/outside, or male/female.

The notion of “purdah” which means curtain in Urdu refers to the gender segregation in Muslim society. I was interested in exploring this potent social construction and placing myself within the space of purdah. While making this work I perform and move through this metaphoric cloth bringing the viewer along with me in the experience of being caught within and seeing through the curtain.

2011

Single channel video, monitor, wood frame, glass
11 min loop

Threshold is a tromp l’oeil video installation that creates the experience of gazing out a window from within the space of a gallery. The viewer looks out onto a field of grass with a solitary kite swaying gently in the sky evoking a sense of nostalgia, childhood memories, and longing.

2005

3 channel video installation
Dimensions vary with room
7 min 17 sec loop

An intimate gesture between two people expanded to the scale of landscape. The simple exchange of cloth is wrought with political, sensual and meditative qualities. The tension in the fabric oscillates between being a protective veil and a restrictive rope.

2005

Single channel video projection
Dimensions vary with room. 
4 min digital video loop

Adrift is the first part of the Water Series. A dream-like video detailing a personal journey through a series of obstacles culminating in a lyrical yet unsettling rebirth under water.

2008

Single channel video projection
Dimensions vary with room. 
4 min 30 sec digital video loop

Homing explores ideas of belonging, place, community and ritual. This large scale video projection follows the artist through a psychological and physical journey through vast landscapes, winding footpaths and a mysterious pull to a place of momentary congregation. Homing creates a meditative cinematic space in which viewers experience the singularity of one body amidst many and landscape as the larger body which encompasses the whole.

2008

Triple channel video projection
Dimensions vary with room. 
running loop

Remember consists of three simple gestures with the tasbeeh (Islamic prayer beads) as a way to perform, deconstruct and create ritual. The individual beads become metaphors for humans and the quest for communion. A narrative emerges of a repeated ancient tradition which is released and culminated in the creation of a new horizon or place of imagination.

2004

Digital photo series
Series of 15 digital prints in lightboxes
Varying dimensions (ranging from 7"x7" to 15"x20")

This series of photos investigates how space and the urban landscape changes when a spiritual or reflective action takes place in the public environment.

2004

Double channel video installation
Dimensions vary with room

This two screen projection isolates movements from the Muslim prayer. The raising finger at times conducts and leads the bowing head and at times follows behind. Spirituality and reflection can endure in even the most banal spaces.

2003

Single channel video
1 min 33 sec

This video examines the mechanization of spiritual rituals and questions the notion of purity. Stark sound and soft image are contrasted to create a paradox of meaning.

2003

Single channel video
2 min 34 sec

An investigation into the feeling of lightness and flight versus being grounded. Gestures of the feet and the haunting quality of being lifted are examined.

2002

Single channel video
5 min 3 sec video loop

Using 6 metres of fabric, the artist engages the viewer in a highly personal act, playing on notions of the gaze. The artist maintains a strong gaze of her own looking beyond the audience. The performance becomes a drawing as the fabric becomes a line that fills the space.

2002

3 digital prints
28" x 22" each

This triptych offers a narrative of travel, dislocation and boundaries of homelands.

2002

3 digital prints
6" x 10.5" each

This triptych investigates ideas of protection and surveillance within political and personal realms.

2001

10 digital prints
11" x 34" each.

This series of billboard-style posters raises questions of personal and cultural identity through the neutral rhetoric of bureaucratic questions.