Short Bio
Saroop Soofi (born 1988) is a Pakistani-Canadian visual artist and art educationist whose multidisciplinary practice bridges cultural narratives with contemporary art, offering a profound exploration of identity, gender, and resilience. Soofi earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia (2017) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from the National College of Arts, Lahore. Rooted in the complexities of her experience as a brown immigrant woman, Soofi’s work transforms traditional craft into powerful acts of reclamation and critique. Her textile-based installations, fabric and metal sculptures, digital illustrations, and performance pieces illuminate the undervalued labor of women, particularly within South Asian traditions. By manipulating materials like silk—a symbol of luxury and gendered labor—through acts of burning and reconstruction, Soofi challenges patriarchal narratives while celebrating the resilience and strength embedded in women’s contributions. Currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Soofi creates visually striking and conceptually rich works that weave together themes of climate change, cultural displacement, and mythological history. Her practice is both deeply personal and universally resonant, positioning her as a significant voice in contemporary art. Soofi’s work not only pushes aesthetic boundaries but also amplifies the narratives of women, contributing meaningfully to global conversations on gender and identity politics.
Statement
My work interrogates the entanglements of gendered invisibility, the erasure of women’s labor, and the structural legacies of post-colonialism through processes of material deconstruction and reassembly. Engaging with destruction as a critical methodology, I employ acts of burning and removal as conceptual tools to expose the fissures within dominant historical narratives and entrenched patriarchal frameworks. These gestures are neither purely aesthetic nor technical; rather, they operate as symbolic interventions, dismantling hierarchies and unveiling hidden histories. The subsequent processes of reconstitution—stitching, layering, and mending—become acts of transformation, evoking themes of regeneration, mortality, and the fragility of existence. Through these gestures, I aim to highlight the fractures within systems of power, revealing the often-overlooked contributions of women and the violence of erasure embedded in colonial histories.
