News from one of our members:

Sarindar Dhaliwal: Narratives from the Beyond

Surrey Art Gallery, British Columbia

September 21 – December  15

The experience of migration affects not only how we remember our culture, but also how we recreate it in our new country. The process of relocating to a new homeland can influence our interpretation of symbols, and have a powerful impact on how we form and adapt our identities. 

The Surrey Art Gallery exhibition Sarindar Dhaliwal: Narratives from Beyond explores questions about culture and memory in both personal and provocative ways. Featuring selections from ten years of photography, sculpture, textile, and video, this survey showcases one of Canada's most accomplished South Asian artists. 

Drawing from childhood memory, global history, and the real and imagined, the world revealed in Sarindar Dhaliwal's mixed-media art presents riveting meditations on beauty, identity, exile, and home. This exhibition traces the artist's experiences in India (where she was born), Britain (where she was raised and educated), and Canada (where she has lived and worked for close to three decades). 

The complex and often hidden traumas of the partition between India and Pakistan is symbolized in Dhaliwal's map of these two countries formed from marigold flowers that appear as though on fire. The joys and traumas of childhood are infused in the artist's giant handmade fairy tale books and large-scale, meticulously arranged coloured pencil collections. The world of sport returns again and again, as in the delicately embroidered cricket leg pad framed within an ornate marble window. 

Together, these artworks and others by this Toronto-based artist present a sumptuous cartography of place and experience that spans the globe while uniting the personal with the universal. 

 

members please send your colour research news  to doreen.balabanoff@gmail.com (until we have a new website - work in progress) and I will make sure it is posted.