Over the fall of 2022, five new acrylic on canvas paintings from the Who’s Your Dadi? series were exhibited at The Hamilton Artist Inc., James Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The show also included a custom-designed wallpaper, a hand-painted floor mural resembling cement tiles, and a few installation elements all taken from the paintings themselves.
A small publication with a special text written by poet and writer Laila Malik was produced in April 2023 and is available on request at no charge from The Inc.
Nuit Blanche 2022 Feature Artist
I’m super excited to announce that I will be a feature artist at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2022.
Nuit Blanche is back with Dr. Julie Nagam as this year’s Artistic Director. Her vision is incredible and I am thrilled to be in the company of so many Indigenous, Black, and racialized artists from around the world and across Turtle Island. This year’s theme is “The Space Between Us”.
Colour of the Year will be a site-specific, participatory artwork in the Aga Khan Museum pools that asks us to consider the sacredness and importance of water, the most basic element of human, plant, and animal life. This work engages our bodily senses to contemplate our relationship and dependence on water as it interacts with toxic dye run-off from the fast fashion industry. I invite you to witness the movement of wind and water while meditating on the colour of cloth and participating in it’s clean up.
Thank you to the City of Toronto and Dr. Julie Nagam for this incredible opportunity to engage public audiences in art, somatic activity, and deep thought.
Ace Hotel Toronto Artwork
Ace Hotel (@acehoteltoronto) commissioned me to create five new original artworks for five different rooms in their new location in Toronto. Rooms 302, 305, 510, 912, 1101 each have a hand-drawn work featuring original typography of the word “home” in different South Asian scripts and languages: Kannada, Tamil, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Bangla. I couldn’t be more thrilled for this collaboartion.
Photo credit: @william.jess.laird
UTM CSAC Artist Talk, April 23, 2022
Please join me on Saturday, April 23, 2022, online for my closing artist talk as part of the Centre for South Asian Civilizations University of Toronto Mississuaga artist in residence award:
THE CENTRE FOR SOUTH ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS PRESENTS
UNSKILLED: AN EXPLORATION OF SOUTH ASIAN TEXTILE from seed to closet
APRIL 23, 2022, online
11AM - 1PM Toronto Time
9:30PM - 11:30PM India Time
5PM - 7PM Central European Time
Fashion Forward: Exhibition and Conversation
Fall 2021 saw the exhibitions Fashion Forward and ¡Adelante Siempre! curated by Hitoko Okada on view at WAHC (Workers Arts and Heritage Centre) in Hamilton, Canada. I had work on display in both shows and participated in two events during the exhibition run: “Fashion Forward a Conversation on re-fashioning sustainability as a relational ecosystem”, a conversation between Sage Paul, Hitoko Okada, and me co-hosted with X University’s Fashion Program at the Creative School; and a “Wash ‘n Care Workshop” where I led participants through the Wash ‘n Care project.
WAHC has produced a beautiful eight minute video tour of both exhibitions narrated by Hitoko Okada that outlines key themes in both exhibitions.