Beschreibung:
Five contemporary South Asian artists examine life in a diaspora, critically dissecting cultural duality and the resulting hybrid identities. Working with performance and installation, photography and sculpture, writing and sewing and moving image and text, their multidisciplinary practices echo the diversity of their layered experiences. Emanating from personal narratives, the works carry a deliberate autobiographical significance as each artist dissects the fissures and dislocations caused by distance. Hovering between recollection, narration and reflection their works record acts of searching for the familiar in the foreign, of repurposing the past in the present, and of locating oneself within displacement. Surendra Lawoti moved to the United States from Nepal; his work has been exhibited at Glass Curtain Gallery (Chicago), Photographic Resource Center (Boston), and Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (Netherlands). Tazeen Qayyum is a Pakistani-trained contemporary miniature painter; her work was included in the 10th Asian Biennale in Dhaka (Bangladesh) and the Painting Biennale in Tehran (Iran). Meera Margaret Singh is a visual artist based in Toronto. She has had residencies at the Art Gallery of Ontario and Banff Centre; her work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions. Asma Sultana is a Bangladeshi-born, Toronto-based British artist who has participated in numerous exhibitions notably at the National Museum in Dhaka. Abdullah M. I. Syed is a Pakistani-born artist and curator working between Karachi, Sydney, and New York; his work has been featured at the 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney) and Mohatta Palace Museum (Karachi). Produced in collaboration with the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, Toronto.00Exhibition: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada (5 September, 2015 – 3 January, 2016)