Common Sky (2025)

 

Faisal Anwar: Common Sky

September 11, 2025 - December 13, 2025
South Asia Institute

South Asia Institute is pleased to announce new exhibition Common Sky will be on view September 13 through December 13, 2025. This will be an immersive exhibition by hybrid artist and curator Faisal Anwar, conceived during his Labverde Residency in 2019 in the Amazon rainforest, Brazi. Rooted in ancient knowledge and driven by predictive futurism, the project explores new ways of collaborating with environmental research and data. By merging scientific facts, artistic expression, and innovation, Common Sky creates poetic and deeply reflective experiences that highlight the impacts of climate change and the interdependence of ecological systems and our collective future. The exhibition features immersive, interactive installations; digital prints; video works; and kinetic sculptures. Venues/dates... Anwar hopes these works will inspire new collaborative processes and methods where art, science, and nature intersect, opening space to ask new questions and engage audiences more broadly with interconnected ecology.

Common Sky is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Hundal Foundation.

Common Sky is made in collaboration with partner scientists and institutions: Joe Siegrist, President/CEO, Purple Martin Conservation Association (PMCA); Dr. Mario Cohn-Haft, National Amazonian Research Institute; Dr. Erika Hingst Zaher, Butantan institute; Dr. Loren Buck, Northern Arizona University; Dr. Kevin Fraser, University of Manitoba and Dr. Jason Fischer, Disney Animals Science and Environment.

About the Artist

Faisal Anwar is an award-winning Pakistani-Canadian hybrid artist, curator, and creative technologist working at the intersection of art, design, data, and emerging technologies. His transdisciplinary practice explores space, time, memory, and human connection through immersive installations, public interventions, and data-driven storytelling. Anwar served as the chief curator for the 2022 Karachi Biennial. He founded CultureLab, a studio that investigates climate change, wellness, sustainability, emerging economies, and social change. Anwar co-founded ArtAddress, an artist-led collective fostering creative discourse. Anwar holds a Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design from the National College of Arts, Lahore, and studied at the Canadian Film Centre's Habitat-LAB Interactive Art and Entertainment Program.

Press Kit

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Works of Note

Breath[in/out]

Real-Time Immersive Interactive Installation

Breath[in/out] is a living digital forest—an immersive installation that transports audiences through time, from the past with ancient knowledge to a predictive future shaped by climate change. It simulates the pulse of a forest, bringing to life the often-invisible rhythms of nature and showing how subtle shifts in weather and climate constantly reshape our environment. Inspired by navigational tools like the astrolabe—an early astronomical instrument used to determine the time of day, the time of year, and the position of celestial bodies—this work reinterprets those ancient knowledge systems through emerging technologies, linking past wisdom with future awareness. As real-time and predictive conditions evolve, the forest inhales and exhales, offering a deeply sensory experience that explores how we once read the skies and how we might learn to listen to the Earth again, becoming part of the ecological network.


Lines That No Longer Hold 

Digital Prints, LED Lightbox Frames

Lines That No Longer Hold is a series of digital artworks created through a layered process that combines scientific research, algorithmic computation, and artistic intuition. Each piece illustrates intricately detailed flocking patterns of migratory birds across North America, including Canada, the United States, and Brazil. These evolving forms are shaped at the crossroads of data and imagination, offering a poetic reflection on movement, ecology, and interconnected systems.