Feb 7 to May 3, 2026

Sameer Farooq: The Fairest Order in the World

Location

Intro Gallery

Main Gallery

Artist(s) Sameer Farooq

Curator(s) Mona Filip

Organized by Dalhousie Art Gallery

About the Exhibition

Cape Breton born, Toronto based artist Sameer Farooq presents a new installation that offers a deeply poetic space to reflect on the fraught and violent histories of art and anthropological museums, their colonial origins, structures, and impulses.

With The Fairest Order in the World, Farooq probes notions of provenance, repatriation, and repair, composing a series of new and recent sculptures and images to articulate unique ideas for repurposing the emptied spaces of museums devoid of their spoils. Mining the possibilities offered by sustained engagement, Farooq invites us to envision what the museum might become through the mechanics of restitution, what it may shift to collect and document, and what kind of experiences it could nurture.

The installation elicits prolonged attention, asking visitors to look intently and to spend time with the objects, contemplating their physical and emotional presence as well as the absences they evoke. The artworks may serve as tools for meditation, revealing a deeper potential that transcends their aesthetic value. An audio environment composed by Farooq’s collaborator Gabie Strong (Los Angeles, CA) sets a deliberately slow pace, encouraging six-minute intervals at each vantage point. Lyrical texts contributed by poet Jared Stanley (Reno, NV) unsettle the rigid format of institutional labels and imagine the objects’ own voices. Farooq’s film produced in collaboration with Mirjam Linschooten (Amsterdam, NL), The Museum Visits a Therapist, offers a reflection on trauma and recovery, personifying the museum and imagining therapeutic strategies for healing historic wounds.

The exhibition takes its title from a text fragment of Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.” Contained in this duality of opposites is the idea that the most organized and just attempt at a universal order is equally as flawed or filled with balance and beauty as an arbitrary pile of refuse. Considering this paradox, Farooq’s meticulously choreographed assembly invites us to interrogate our relationship with art objects and museum displays, as well as the ordering narratives they uphold.

Organized and circulated by Dalhousie Art Gallery.

About the Artist

Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent, born in Cape Breton and based in Toronto. Farooq has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including The Venice Biennale of Architecture (2023), Fonderie Darling, Montréal (2022); Susan Hobbs, Toronto (2022); Koffler Gallery, Toronto (2021); Patel Brown, Toronto (2021); Lilley Museum, Reno (2019); Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2017); Institute of Islamic Culture, Paris (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Izmir (2015); Artellewa, Cairo (2014); and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2011). Reviews dedicated to his work have been published by Art Forum, Canadian Art, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, The Huffington Post, and C Magazine. He is an alumnus of the prestigious Bemis Center Residency.

About the Curater

Mona Filip is a contemporary art curator and writer based in Toronto. Originally from Romania, she received her BFA from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC, and her MFA from SUNY at Buffalo. With an idea-driven and dialogue-focused approach, Filip collaborates with artists to produce experiential installations that engage the public on sensorial, emotional and intellectual levels. Filip’s curatorial experience spans over forty exhibitions and site-specific projects, collaborations with guest curators, and a broad range of public programs. She is currently Curator at the Art Museum of the University of Toronto.

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