The Museum of Found Objects: Toronto (Maharaja and ——)
The Museum of Found Objects: Toronto (Maharaja and ——) was an archive of everyday objects sourced from South-Asian neighbourhoods in cities around the GTA: Scarborough, Mississauga, Brampton and Etobicoke.
Toronto-based artist, Sameer Farooq and his Paris-based collaborator, Mirjam Linschooten applied the methodologies of a museum—collecting, preparing, photographing, interpreting and displaying—to the collection.
Commissioned by SAVAC, The Museum of Found Objects: Toronto (Maharajah and ——) was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario simultaneously with their blockbuster Maharajah: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts.
By displaying these objects on pedestals and in museum vitrines, and now in the glossy pages of an artist book, The Museum of Found Objects challenges the museum’s portrayal of "culture," by introducing non-precious, surprising, and mundane objects into a place of importance.
“Everyday objects give us the ability to see things in a different way. They are accessible, unpretentious, and from the surface can reach deep into the hidden undercurrents of a place.” -- Sameer Farooq and Mirjam Linschooten
“The Museum of Found Objects is an authentic exploration of how common everyday objects connect and help us better understand the various dimensions of the South Asian community in Toronto and nation-wide. It also reflects SAVAC's mandate to present work that explores issues and ideas shaping South Asian identities in a challenging and experimental way. Congratulations the artists on the successful reception of the exhibition and today the launch of their book."
-- Fayiaz Chunara, Chairman, SAVAC Board of Directors
About the artist book
The book continues the exhibition’s museological approach, with a collection of catalogue-style photographs, which are accompanied by the humourous and subjective captions that were used in the exhibition.
A series of notes, written by Haema Sivanesan, offers insight into the way The Museum of Found Objects critiques and challenges the museum’s authorial role in defining culture, while also reflecting upon ideas about the urban South Asian consumer.
The books will be available on a pay-what-you can basis (suggested: $10) at the Toronto book launch on Wednesday September 14.
The books will be available free-of-charge to the first 50 visitors at the Etobicoke book launch on Saturday September 17.
The production of this artist book was made possible in part through generous donations from:
Julia Ouellete
Hans Bathija
About Sameer Farooq and Mirjam Linschooten
Sameer Farooq (Canada) and Mirjam Linschooten (France) collaborate on projects. Their work often (but not always) touches upon subjects of archiving, embedded power, the gap between language and object, advanced faking, site-specific reactions, sampling, continual reconsideration, paranoid hoarding, ordering, important choices, insider vs. outsider perspectives, the present and the future, class, the surface, type treatments, organization according to unidentifiable systems (and, surrealist montage procedures), reproduction and representation, the construction of meaning, the wunderkammer, newspapers, facts, ways of disseminating data into the world, fiction and non-fiction, discourse and power, digital and actual ready-mades, traces, the public, signs and the symbolic order, and rewriting the present, and their work always aims to challenge hegemony and masculinist domination!
About SAVAC
Since 1993, SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) has been dedicated to the presentation and promotion of contemporary visual art by South Asian artists. SAVAC operates without a gallery space, but collaborates with various organizations locally, nationally and internationally, to produce innovative and critical exhibitions, screenings, online projects and artistic interventions.
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