Farheen HaQ

Farheen HaQ is an artist who lives and works in Victoria, British Columbia. She uses her media-based practice to explore, consider, and reconsider the different intersections of her South Asian, Muslim-Canadian, female identity. HaQ’s work conveys the story of many South Asian second-generation children who explore and question their identity while living in a place where they are the minority. HaQ also beautifully gives homage to our mothers and the women who came before us in her work. The media forms she uses include video, installation, performance, and photography. Her drive lays in a constant questioning of the social structures and identities we inhabit; she invites her audience to reconsider their experiences as well. Her work has been shown internationally, including in New York, Lahore, Buenos Aires, and Paris.

Manpreet Kaur: Before we start the interview, what are your preferred pronouns?

Farheen HaQ: I totally appreciate you asking that! She, her, and hers is great.

MK: Great! To start off, tell me a little bit about your childhood. What was it like growing up as a South Asian Muslim-Canadian?

FH: I had a dual childhood in so many ways, like a lot of racialized, immigrant children. On the one hand, I lived in a fairly small city, yet I had this really tight-knit South Asian community. I grew up at the mosque, with lots of families, and saw my parents, aunties, and uncles build the mosque essentially. We would go paint on the weekends and then it became this big cultural center. So, I had a real sense of belonging and intergenerational exposure. There were grandmothers, mothers, aunties, and uncles all gathered, so it was a very rich childhood. However, my family home wasn't always peaceful; there was definitely domestic violence. There was patriarchy playing itself out in the power relationships between my mother and my father. There was a lot of fear in the house and there was definitely a lot of control over what it means to be a girl and how I should dress, who I should talk to, and all those codes. So, there was the belonging and the real security and blanketing by this community, but then also this kind of restraint.

On the other hand, I loved school and I thrived there. I think I was a bookish kid from elementary school all the way up into high school. I always found myself hanging out with other immigrant kids, but not necessarily always South-Asians. I remember in elementary school one of my best friends was Korean. I also had lots of white friends too, but I don't know if some of them were more recent immigrants or third generation. However, by the end of high school, I had this really eclectic group of friends. My best friend was Greek, and I had another best friend who was Laotian, Chinese-Canadian. I loved that; I loved this sense of being in this place where there was this real intersection of different experiences happening and worldview's sharing themselves. So, I had a really rich, complex childhood and I loved the place that I grew up.

MK: How did you then get into media art?

FH: I took art all throughout high school and I had an amazing high school art teacher, which I think is fairly rare. She was a practicing contemporary artist, still is, and is a dear friend of mine named Carolyn Wren. She really encouraged us to look at ourselves, our stories, and legends that felt relevant to us, and that we wanted to explore. She really helped me hone my craft and I started doing photography probably in about grade 10. My work right at that time was self-portraiture, so I became this photo series where I dressed up in a lehenga and a sari, but then I was also wearing Doc Marten boots, haha. I would then strike these poses from Bollywood films and that was the beginning. I don’t think my work has actually changed that much. It has aesthetically honed itself, but really that first turning of the camera on myself, the idea of looking at my own self, my life, and my identity as source material, and the different intersections of worldview's landing on my body, began in high school with an invitation from this teacher to explore.

MK: When you first got into media art, what was your family's reaction to you pursuing it?

FH: Definitely worry, concern. I come from a fairly typical immigrant, Indian family. My family was like 'you should be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer’; there are only three choices. Financial security is the top concern for them. So, there was definitely a 'why do you need to take art', even in high school, and, 'you know it's a hobby, it's not something that you do full time'. However, I’ve been a full-time artist for many years now. The content of my work was also challenging for some members of my family, whether I'm showing myself being unclothed or clothed, or putting on a hijab and taking it off. My family was challenging, but it also allows space for conversation. I think now they're like 'okay, this is what you do. You have questions and you challenge'. I think sometimes that's also the role of the artist, and so they think, 'oh, she's the artist in the family, she does this kind of stuff that we don't always agree with'. It's been many years now, and I've been working in the arts for almost 20 years, so they've gotten used to it. It was challenging for them at the beginning, however.

MK: I want to talk about your work. In a lot of it, the materials you use are fairly inexpensive, and a lot of the time, you use your body to perform for your video practice. For example, in The Table, you only use a white sheet, table, running faucet, and your body to illustrate the experiences of the women around you. Feminist writer and theorist Alexandra Juhasz proposed that feminist video practice should be anti-hierarchical, process-oriented, less costly, user-friendly, and populist. I'm curious as to why you use this style of art-making yourself?

FH: Currently I'm in the studio working with a hundred and forty pounds of Masoor ki daal (red lentils), which is an everyday material as well. Really, it's this desire for me in my practice to reconsider the material that we encounter in the everyday and elevate them to be a material that's worthy of consideration. When I go into the studio and make a work, whether I'm wrapping myself up in a tablecloth, a super long sari, or running lentils through my hands, it's to create a deeper relationship with what I work with in my life outside of the studio. Red lentils are what I saw my mother work with. The folds of a sari, the wrapping of the tablecloth, and the place of filming that and creating a video allow me to see into the many layers of meaning that lie within the gestures and the relationship between myself, as a woman, and the materials that I encounter and work with. I look at my everyday life and re-examine it. ‘Ok, so I've been washing a lot’, and I find myself at the sink, or I'm cooking. Right now, I'm doing a lot of work around food because I feed my family. My mom has always fed me. What does it mean? How is food, specifically the work that I'm doing right now, like the seeds that come from this lentil plant, a form of material that transmits a certain kind of knowledge? The desire to capture this and to look at this in my work is also to recognize 'this is important work' and an important form of knowledge that is usually overlooked, or not considered important because it often takes place in the domestic sphere, where women work. This whole vocabulary of really important work is rendered invisible in our public world when we go outside of our homes.

MK: Do you identify as an experimental filmmaker, and what does the word ‘experimental’ mean to you?

FH: Well, the word experimental to me means creating new combinations of images. Specifically for experimental filmmakers, it means playing with the media and pushing it beyond what we are normally used to, or how we would normally encounter the medium. Sometimes I say I'm an interdisciplinary artist. I used to say I'm a video artist, but my practice really encompasses a lot more elements now. I do performance and I'm working with sculptural elements in my work as well. I find that I just say I'm an interdisciplinary artist or just an artist. But I would say experimental filmmaking has informed my own practice and it's part of the work I do for sure.

MK: A lot of your work revolves around you, your mother, and the women before you. Would you consider your work feminist, and yourself a feminist? What does the word mean to you?

FH: I do consider my work feminist. The word is rooted for me in social justice, in balancing and recognizing the worth and value of women and those fem-identified people. It's part of the drive for me in making work, specifically around rendering visible the work that happens in the domestic sphere. We live in a hyper-masculinized world. Patriarchy is alive and well, and my work really is an effort to honor, to elevate, and to create space in a world where there often is less space for our stories, and for stories of other women.

MK: I want to talk about my favorite piece. In the film Drinking From My Mother's Saucer, you write in the description that your art practice offers you the “possibility of transformation from suffering and pain to healing and wholeness”. For myself, the piece reminded me of British colonialism, which happened for over a hundred years, and The Partition in 1947 which left India and Pakistan in a messy situation, which I assume is illustrated in the chai spilling out of the cup. So my question is, how can we as Pakistanis and Indians transform that suffering and pain into healing and wholeness?

FH: Umm, geez, haha. I think… I mean… art for me is also a way of having a different kind of conversation, like what we're doing. I feel so delighted that you saw the work, that it resonates, but that we're sharing and having this conversation. One of the things in my practice that's happening too is a lot more collaboration. I ask myself, how is a conversation, and listening, a part of my practice? I've been researching with my parents and asking them a lot of questions. My father was alive during The Partition, so I've been recording his story and experience. To hear, to revisit, and to listen to the stories as much as possible, and to ask these questions, is critical because for most of my adult life I knew this was something that had happened. I knew that my father lived in a refugee camp for six months. There are so many places of trauma in people's lives and yet we don't talk about it, it's unspoken. For me, on a very personal level, asking my parents, my elders, my family, and my community, and then collaborating and asking my Punjabi and Hindu friends their stories, is important because we've had this experience of being divided in our community amongst religious lines. Art for me is really such a beautiful space of listening and conversation, whether that's in sharing and telling our stories, actually working across communities together, creating a film, or a creating a sculptural piece. I think it’s also a safe way; when I talk about it, it offers the possibility of healing and wholeness, for it allows us to do something with the story. So as an artist, I've been listening to my parents' stories about the Partition. My mom wasn't alive during the Partition, but just her memory of hearing her parents tell the story of how they left their place then becomes material for me. Then, instead of trauma just happening and there being despair, or a feeling of helplessness, art, and filmmaking become this way for me to manipulate the story, to retell it, to honor it, to witness it, but also make something of it. I think there's great healing that happens through that and I think there's also a lot of healing that happens from just being a witness to the work also.

MK: Beautiful answer! Thank you. In the film Burke and Dream, you examine the Indian feminine construct in the movie industry as a sort of a fantasy. What was your intention in creating that piece?

FH: I know how critical Bollywood films have been to my image making psyche. They're the first images I saw, so I wanted to number one, honor the place of Indian film in my repertoire as a source of inspiration, and as the root of my first cinematic experience. I wanted to go back to that vocabulary, but I also wanted to critique the very strict gender norms that are played out in Bollywood films. Mainstream films across many cultures offer this place of escape from the "every day", and so that single gesture of me reclining onto a pillow and closing my eyes symbolize that the film world can take you away, to another place. You forget your life, and that's a beautiful kind of escape and freedom, but then there's also this feeling for me of ‘what am I escaping into'? Is this the world I want to escape into, this highly gendered, patriarchal, space?

MK: In a lot of your work you describe your vacillating relationship with Islam. You also offer alternative images in response to stigmatized ones of Muslim women in society, and you consider how others perceive your body differently when you're veiled versus when you're not. What has been your journey with Islam, and as a Muslim living in Canada?

FH: Like I was saying with my childhood, the mosque was a source of community, belonging, and joy. It formed my understanding of what it means to live a devotional life and a life of worship and reverence. I absolutely identify as a Muslim, but my practice has become less orthodox. We observe the holidays in my family, but I'm married to a non-Muslim. I still pray; I don't pray five times a day, but I still have prayer in my life. I find like with any spiritual practice, it's changed over the years. I've always known I'm Muslim, but there were times I thought, 'oh I'm not really practicing as I should be'. The complicated thing I find too within Islam is that there is this colonization of Islam with a very particular type of Islam, like the Saudi Wahhabism that’s spreading. There seems to be this hierarchy within Islamic communities that if you practice “this” this kind of Islam then you're “legit”; there's judgment. As I get older, and the more my community is now including different kinds of Muslims and different various levels of practice among different faith groups, I stay to the heart of Islam, which is a belief in a creator and this kind of oneness of all of us, and all of creation. My art and my filmmaking are a place for me to contemplate that experience of being alive here. I consider my art as another way of creating work that’s devotional. I consider it a contemplative practice. For me, it's part of my Islamic practice.

MK: I was listening to one of your interviews in a panel discussion. You talk about your piece Surveillance deconstructing the powerless Muslim woman and putting her in the position of the gazer. Typically, we see that men are usually placed in the position of being the gazers and that women are those who are gazed upon. What does it mean to you to put a woman in the position of the gaze?

FH: I think, as a woman working in film and image making, I do it because I strongly believe that I need to create images of myself and my community. I think that we women need to counter so many places where images are made of us and create. Whether it be beauty standards or ways that we are consumed by an external gaze. What happens with those images is that we end up concealing them and internalizing that gaze. So, it's a way for me to disrupt that power dynamic. I think it comes down to when I make those images and I'm the gazer, I'm looking out, but also creating the image. It puts me back in my power.

MK: Where do you see yourself and your work going in the next couple of years?

FH: I'm working in food right now. I found early in my practice asking a lot of questions about myself and my body. By virtue of doing so, I was implicating my community and my experiences. I'm explicitly now working with my family. It's been researching, interviewing, and collaborating with my mother and my father. I'm creating this multi-channel video currently with lentils and this big floor work using 140 pounds of lentils, which is the weight of my mother. I'll be collaborating with her as well, for I'm interested more and more into working in relationships. I've always worked in relationship to myself, and I think that's an important relationship, but I also have come to understand that in order to work with myself and understand myself better, I have to work with my family. How have my parents and my grandparents lived inside of me? So much of my younger years, I tried to differentiate, be defiant, and assert my own independence and individuality from them; but they are the source that I come from. Thus, I have been working in relationship, collaboration, and digging more into my family's history and place. In my research on family history, I have also gone back to our ancestral land in northern India and interviewed family there as a way to understand how the land lives in us and is material for our lives and our existence.

MK: What can we expect from you in the near future?

FH: I'd say a lot more performance and collaboration will be my work, performed or used gestures. I've danced for many years, so my dance vocabulary and movement will come into the work. I feel this impulse to perform along with whatever it is, sculptural piece or video installation. I've also been doing video work for the last few years, which has evolved into installation. There are moving images, which are often the basis of the work, but then they become integrated into an environment, a table, a giant pile of lentils, or materiality with the moving image.

MK: Great! I’m excited to see what you do next. Thank you so much for your time Farheen, I really appreciate it.

FH: You're so welcome Manpreet! So happy that you reached out and connected. If you ever need any advice or anything, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

My name is Manpreet Kaur and I am a third-year undergraduate student. I am from Fresno, California but currently live in Davis, California where I study Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities studies at the University of California, Davis. Speaking with Farheen HaQ was an incredibly humbling experience and I felt as though we have a shared connection through our similar experiences of growing up in South Asian homes. I am very thankful to Farheen HaQ for all she does and for taking out the time to speak with me.

This interview was conducted via Skype from Davis, California to Vancouver Island, British Columbia on October 29, 2018.