Yesterday I had the particular pleasure of heading to Inverness, over on the west side of the island, to see artist Sameer Farooq give a talk about his work at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts. I travelled to the west coast of Unama’ki with a lovely group of smart, ambitious, curious, compassionate, passionate and interesting women. People who are actually working to make this island a better place for everyone who lives here. I felt quite fortunate to be counted among their numbers for the day.
Sameer Farooq is an artist of Pakistani heritage who was born and raised here, in Unama’ki. His current work grapples with concepts of repatriation/decolonizing archives/museums and bread as a cultural and social form of sculpture and site of exchange/collision/cross over/kinship as well as nourishment for the body. His artist talk was smartly, beautifully mesmerizing and I felt drawn in, riveted for the duration.
I was already familiar with Sameer’s work because he was introduced to me on the internet by a mutual friend and colleague when I was still living in Montreal. This was the first time I met him in person and my impression of him was as a warm, gentle, generous, kind person who made you feel seen and welcome when you engaged with him. The success of his social practice makes perfect sense.
Sameer was long listed for the Sobey Award and I definitely think it was well deserved! Big fan of his work over here!
After the talk, which was well attended, I began to realize that I knew a lot of people in the room and began talking and catching up with all kinds of people I hadn’t seen in an age or so. I didn’t even have time to speak with everyone I wanted to before it was time to leave! It was a pleasure, even for a socially awkward introvert who doesn’t often enjoy socializing.
Unama’ki/Cape Breton is a funny place, so it is not totally surprising that Art Icon Joan Jonas was sitting front and centre at Sameer’s talk! Philip Glass visited the exhibition by NYC’s Jeri Coppola, currently on view at the ICCA yesterday and we were speculating whether or not we would see him at the talk on the way up (we didn’t).
After the talk we headed to the beach and hit the beachside snack bar to fill our bellies which were rumbling from looking at so many photos of bread and bread making!
It was a magnificent day.