Sunday, March 7, 2010

The shift in Faisal Samra’s artistic practice from drawings, paintings and sculptures to video installations , performance and digital photography would seem, to the casual observer, to be dramatic, signifying a sharp break from one mode of art-making toward a quick and total

embrace of another. Yet closer consideration of Samra’s oeuvre over more than three decades of creative output reveals both a seamless progression and a steady commitment to art as a visceral expression of lived experience. Samra’s medium of choice may change, but his desire to find forms with the capacity to make manifest all the forces that act upon one’s being – such as the formation of identity, the impression of memory, the struggle to build up a sense of self or strip down everything extraneous to a spiritual or emotional core – this is constant across his art.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Art critic – USA- 2007