Paper Guns

Asif Farooq is best known for fabricating precisely hand-crafted paper guns. The first series of paper guns were produced in 2007 after the unexpected death of Farooq’s close friend.  A year after his passing, Farooq fabricated and gifted paper guns to loved ones of the deceased as a way to honor him.

Over the last decade of Farooq’s life, these guns evolved from an object of memento mori to a body of work that reflect on themes that are persistent in Farooq’s practice.

Farooq saw paper as a material that has a birth, life, and death just like people. The transience of the material and the objects he chooses to create out of it serves as a temporary memorial that in effect embody an observation of time and the human emotions that develop within its confines. The precision and detail of each paper gun parallels the emotional weight of its functional counterpart.