From the conceptually rich, embodied practice of South Asian Muslim Canadian artist Farheen Haq emerge poetic ruminations on familial and collective relations of caregiving, cultural duty, intergenerational pain, resilience, forgiveness, and healing. I am my mother’s daughter is a survey of multimedia works by Haq from the mid-2000s to the present that incorporate elements of text, performance, photography, video, sculpture, and installation.
The exhibition title pays homage to the strength and knowledge systems of Haq’s mother, who arrived, in the 1970s, from Pakistan on Haudenosaunee territory in the Niagara region of Canada to enter into an arranged marriage. The artist reflects on her experience as a child of that union and a mother herself by engaging in “inner housekeeping.” This process involves reframing her mother’s experience as an alternative model of feminism, taking personal journeys through her family’s past as a way of moving forward, and engaging in political reconciliations informed by the territories on which she and her family arrived as guests. Haq’s creative practice is, therefore, structured around two main areas of inquiry: determining the meaning of her family history, as well as cultural and spiritual heritage, in the present and their legacy for the future; and acknowledging settlers’ status as uninvited guests on Indigenous lands and making meaningful gestures toward reconciliation.
Organized by the Campbell River Art Gallery and initially presented on Kwakwaka’wakw Territory in relation to the Salish Sea, I am my mother’s daughter subsequently traveled to the Hamilton Art Gallery on Haudenosaunee Territory, where the artist’s family story on Turtle Island first began. In its expanded presentation of I am my mother’s daughter, The Reach is proud to premiere two new bodies of embroidered works by Haq: a series of dupattas or veils, Ghoonghat ke pat khol, and a series of prayer mats, Janamaaz. The artist and The Reach are grateful to the Mathxwí and Semá:th Nations, whose unceded ancestral territory is now known as the city of Abbotsford.
