‘Lo que sabe el agua’ (2026) is a video installation, part of a larger body of work that explores the knowledge and guidance of water, seeing water as ancestral futurity, and as a form of counter mapping that refuses colonial border regimes and knowledge systems. Lo que sabe el agua translates as ‘What water knows’ …
I am thrilled to announce that i have recently graduated and officially Dr. Ismail Farouk! You can checkout my abstract below: Title: Politics of the Gut: Food, Art and Colonial Modernity Abstract This dissertation attempts to lay out a terrain for food-based practice in the Fine Arts, where food is both the subject and medium/method …
The work ‘The Eaters:: Comedores / The Eaten :: Comidos’ was realised for a group exhibition and cultural exchange project called Conversations in Gondwana which culminated in an exhibition hosted at the Centre for Contemporary Culture São Paulo (CCSP), in Brazil, in 2019. The work allowed for a conversation across histories and geographies, personal experiences …
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Muchoindio is the title of the artwork that forms part of the digital/online art component associated with my PhD project. The online work houses several multi-channel short video pieces that play automatically and on a continuous loop along with selected still imagery. The combination of still and video imagery dynamically loads by scrolling down the …
I was honoured to participate in Webinar: Performative Meetings: 20 Years of Collaborations Between Social and Artistic Movements, hosted by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as part of the public programme for the exhibition Seeing Through Stone. I was invited by Frente 3 de Fevereiro to …
Conversations in Gondwana (2019) was a transcontinental, research-driven platform, hosted at the Centre for Contemporary Culture São Paulo (CCSP) with support from the São Paulo State Government. The project paired South African and Brazilian artists in year-long dialogues addressing history, identity, gender, and urban dynamics under a decolonial lens. My collaboration with Daniel Lima included …
Art for Humanity (AFH), hosted by the Durban University of Technology’s Faculty of Art & Design, is a not-for-profit public benefit organisation engaging with multidisciplinary arts practices and a wide range of creative work, especially around the urgent need to centre social justice today. Based primarily in Durban, AFH supports, hosts, documents, creates space for, …
This set of foraging walks, food, herb and seed shares and curated film screenings was put together by collaborating artists Nicole Sarmiento, Ismail Farouk and Yasmin Meyer. In Archives of the Botanical you were invited to a day of film screenings, walks and seed/herb shares for Palestine. Alongside the work of visual artist and filmmaker …
In 2024, I curated a retrospective of acclaimed documentary photographer Cedric Nunn to coincide with the launch of the African Documentary Photography Archive Initiative (ADPAI). The exhibition invited viewers to engage with Nunn’s photographs relationally — connecting past and present, and revealing images as sites of solidarity, resilience, fugitivity, and struggle across race, class, gender, …
Continuing the Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions series, Ismail Farouk, a Fellow in the MAK Urban Future Initiative, presented a survey of his activities and strategies for activating change, including video, photography and performance. Farouk’s focus on the urban spaces of Johannesburg, South Africa point the Western viewer to places, vocabulary and politics that might …
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Urban Future Manifestos (edited by Peter Noever and Kimberli Meyer with texts by Saskia Sassen, Zvi Hecker, Ai Weiwei) is a compelling anthology of interdisciplinary responses to urgent global urban challenges — including migration, economic shifts, political tensions, and ecological concerns. It was inspired by the MAK Center’s Urban Future Initiative (UFI) Fellowship program, which …
Smaaklik is a public artwork created for the City of Gent and Africalia between 2010 and 2016. It is more than an artwork, more than a bench, more than a place to sit. It is a site for gathering, an invitation to linger, and a social strategy disguised as urban furniture. The work unfolded over …
My practice was profiled by Cara Snyman in the publication Positions: Contemporary Artists in South Africa, edited by Peter Anders and Matthew Krouse. The book brings together critical perspectives on contemporary art practices in South Africa, foregrounding artists engaging deeply with space, politics, and the everyday. Snyman’s essay, Artistic Work “With” and “In” Space, situates …
As part of the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, themed Cities: Architecture and Society, curated by Cassim Shepard, I was invited to produce a short film profiling Johannesburg. The film, titled JHB626GP, combines digital photographs, archival film, video, and kinetic flash animations to capture the unique urban rhythms of Johannesburg. It explores the city’s historical legacy …
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This article was originally published in the African Cities Reader I. A creation of Chimurenga and the African Centre for Cities: https://chimurengachronic.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/African-Cities-Reader-I-Online-high-res.pdf By Ismail Farouk Joubert Park presents a particular context of the Johannesburg inner city in decline. situated centrally in the downtown area, Joubert Park boasts two large taxi interchanges and a tightly locked …