Farheen Haq

2024

44 X 82 inches (2 panels)

organza, saffron thread, gold kiran fringe

Punjabi translation of Kabir poem by Harpreet Leeka

Community engaged stitching circles on Lək̓ʷəŋən Territory, Victoria, BC & Haudenosanee Territory, Toronto, ON with: 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

These veils are an invitation to those who read, stitch, or listen to Kabir’s 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.

This community embroidery project became a way to celebrate collective divinity and interconnectedness. Over several weeks people from various backgrounds—across ancestries, religions, genders, and age groups—gathered to not only sew together but to create new bonds, renew old relationships, and create art. During these embroidery circles, I would recite Kabir’s poem and invite contemplation and sharing. 

گھونگھٹ کے پٹ کھول رے

Ghoonghat Ke Pat Khol Re  (Lift Up Your Veil)

Lift up your veil,

the beloved awaits you

Oh, lift up your veil

In everybody, the same sovereign

Why speak harsh words to anyone?

Don’t be proud of wealth or beauty

Illusory, this five-coloured cloth

Light a lamp in the palace of emptiness

Be not swayed by winds of desire

With practice and skill, I found the divine here

In this house, the priceless beloved

Kabir says, here is bliss

The throb of an ancient drumbeat.

Kabir

Translated by Vipul Rikhi

2024

1 min 49 secs

Two channel video projection

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 SENĆOŦEN text to acknowledge the intersection of my Muslim spiritual inheritance on Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ 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 and land steward Sarah Jim.  She leads the W̱S͸ḴEM Ivy Project which is healing her family land by removing invasive ivy.  Sarah’s love and devotion to W̱S͸ḴEM land is an inspiration to me. We have worked together on a youth mural and collaborated on gatherings to heal the forest, share culture and feast together with South Asian 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

The prayer mat has always been a portal for me to contemplate connection and the vastness of my interior world. This janamaz has zardozi embroidery, gota kiran and sheesha kaam/glass embroidery, incorporating elements of Indian and Islamic design. Part of my daily practice living is to visit the ocean, here I am reminded that I am part of something bigger and connected to all things.

Boond samani hai samunder mein, janat hai sab koi

Samander samana boond mein, bujhe birla koi

بوند سمائی ہے سمندر میں، جانت ہے سب کوئی
سمندر سمانا بوند میں، بوجھے برلا کوئی

کبیر

When a drop merges into the ocean, everyone understands it

It is the rare one who understands the essence of the ocean merging into the drop

Kabir

2022

Single channel video projection

2022

2 mins 38 secs

Single channel video

2022

Single channel video

2020

Single channel video

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.

2018                        

140 pounds red lentils, cotton fabric

Hamara Badan uses the language of food and the body, both being ways that my mother cares for me. This work is an attempt to bury my old ways that prevented me from seeking her and honouring her for who she is.  The way that I was taught in the education system in Canada and the way that I took on the feminist project didn’t include my mother’s experience. It disconnected me from my own family. The endeavour in my work is to heal the way that I have felt separate from my family and from my mother.

2018

3 channel video installation.

A triptych of three generations: grandmother, mother and daughter. During some research work, I was filming my mother and I sitting at the kitchen table sifting lentils and I was struck by this moment when she was pouring the lentils into my hand. Food has always been my mothers love language. With this work, I honour flows of matriarchal  knowledge, expertise and care.  

Thank you Gerry Ambers and Aisha Haq for their hands in this work.

2 mins 9 secs

Digital video

2015

How do I reconcile being on stolen land with my mother’s experience? And my children’s experience of being of mixed ancestry?

The chai is being poured out of the copper vessel into the bone china tea cup. The tea cup is inherited from my husband’s grandfather. The audio is the sound of a buffalo stampede that shakes; and this disturbance also recalls what my mother said when she flew on that airplane to Turtle Island at age 17 to live with her husband – she shook for that whole flight. 

This piece started from a very specific memory –an early memory from big dinner parties where at the end of the night, everyone would be drinking chai and the parents would pour chai into the saucer to cool. It’s a sweet comforting memory.

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 early work shows my interest in text and image and tracing my family’s history.  Looking back at this work and my latest razai (quilt) project Sangam, I see the same themes of comfort, dislocation and ancestral voices ever present in my creative inquiry.

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.