Farouk submitted his dissertation in Visual and Performing Art from Durban University of Technology (DUT). He is currently waiting for examination results and hopes to graduate in September 2025. 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, …
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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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 …
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 …
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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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, …
In 2018, I had the privilege of serving as academic coordinator for ISEA Durban, one of the leading international symposia on electronic art. Alongside this, I collaborated with Nicole Sarmiento to present a land performance video commemorating 100 years of the Native Land Act in South Africa, reflecting on the ongoing impact of colonial land …
Photos: Ashley Walters, Poem: Toni Steward This collaborative walk and spatial intervention through performance, sound, poetry and alternative forms of collective mapping took place under the rubric of a public art festival put together to commemorate the centenary of the 1913 Land Act. The LAND festival, put together by the Gordon Institute of Performing …
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 …
As part of the public program of the LAND public art festival and symposium, Farouk and Nicole Sarmiento curated a set of site-sensitive film screenings of films by Kim Munsamy, Sebástian Porras, Heidi Grunebaum and Mark Kaplan. The films were screened in historic buildings in Cape Town’s Central Business District, which carry within them histories of …
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 …
God’s Land / South Africa / 2009 / 2’15 / 4:3 In Highlands Hill, Yeoville, a neighborhood in an inner city of Johannesburg, hundreds of worshippers gather daily to pray. This causes friction with the municipality, which has earmarked the area for housing re-development. The City Parks authority has designated the Hill as a “no …
In 2008, I received the inaugural Sylt Quelle Cultural Award for Southern Africa, presented by kunst:raum sylt quelle in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg. The award recognised my Johannesburg Trolley Pusher Formalisation Project, which addressed the precarious labour of inner-city trolley pushers who transport goods between Johannesburg’s taxi ranks: http://www.jozi-artlab.co.za/en/sylt_quelle_cultural_award/award.php.html