BEACON – a pamphlet series in ten issues’ focuses on how the commitment of artists’ to wider social movements informs contemporary artistic practice. The series will feature texts by artists whose practices engage with language and visual arts.
SAMEER FAROOQ
Sameer Farooq is a Canadian artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. With a versatile approach that shifts between sculpture, photography, documentary film, and anthropological methods, he investigates strategies of representation to expand the ways through which museums have looked at the past through traditional forms of collection, interpretation and display. Farooq foregrounds community-based models of knowledge production and an array of contemplative practices in order to suggest new ways of narrating our cultural histories. Farooq has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including Susan Hobbs (2022); Koffler Gallery (2021); Patel Brown Gallery (2021); Lilley Museum, Nevada (with Jared Stanley, 2019); Aga Khan Museum (2017); Institute of Islamic Culture, Paris (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Turkey (2015); Artellewa, Cairo (2014); and the Art Gallery of Ontario (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.
JARED STANLEY
Jared Stanley is a poet and writer who often works with visual artists. Recent books include EARS (Nightboat, 2017), Shall (Black Rock Press, 2019), and Ignore the Cries of Empty Stones and Your Flesh Will Break Out in Scavengers (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2018). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Review, Posit, Folder Magazine, and many others, and his work has been awarded The Saturnalia Prize, the Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellowship (with Sameer Farooq), and the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Recent collaborative exhibitions have shown at the Lilley Museum (Reno), in collaboration with Sameer Farooq, Other Places Art Fair (San Pedro), Spring Break Art Fair (New York), and the Atheneum Art & Music Library (La Jolla), in collaboration with Matthew Hebert. He teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He lives in Reno, Nevada.