Simranpreet Kaur Anand
with Conner Singh VanderBeek
A real story of direct motion
41.25” x 32.75”
Picture-printed canvas
2024
Assortment of the Artists
The Employees Arts & Heritage Centre (WAHC) hosted the opening reception of the International Goals exhibition on Saturday, September 21. Curated by Simranpreet Kaur Anand, a multidisciplinary artist specializing in diaspora and id and Conner Singh VanderBeek, a cultural researcher and musician, the exhibition options the work of neighborhood artists Sunny Arora, Alejandro Franco Briones, Purple Tree Artists’ Collective, Santosh Chandra Sekar, and Jujhar Singh.
Held in collaboration with Laadliyan, a gaggle empowering South Asian girls, and the Naujawan Help Community, a corporation advocating for employees’ rights, the exhibition paperwork curators’ engagement with Punjabi neighborhood activists, emphasizing immigrant tales and neighborhood resilience. Highlighting the historical past of migrant employees in Canada via visible and media arts, the exhibition additionally incorporates objects from WAHC’s everlasting assortment, reflecting on the struggles and contributions of those employees. VanderBeek and Anand had been in a small village in Punjab, India researching a standard type of weaving after they noticed first-hand the helplessness of a overwhelming majority of locals who needed to maneuver to Canada for a “higher life”.
“We spoke to numerous households whose dream was to relocate to Canada due to the financial circumstances in Punjab. A whole bunch of Punjabi youth are actually in Canada, toiling in monetary precarity and caught navigating the vagaries of the immigration course of,” says VanderBeek. The curators have used weaving and quilting to create photos of worldwide college students protesting, juxtaposing them with photos of migrant agricultural employees in North America within the 70s and 80s that they discovered within the archives of the Canadian Farmworkers Union.
Simranpreet Kaur Anand with Conner Singh VanderBeek A real story of direct motion 41.25” x 32.75” Picture-printed canvas 2024 Assortment of the Artists
Lately, the variety of worldwide college students from Punjab finding out in Canada has surged, reflecting Canada’s rising enchantment as a examine vacation spot. In keeping with the newest knowledge from Statistics Canada, worldwide scholar enrollments have seen a pointy rise throughout numerous tutorial ranges, together with undergraduate and graduate applications. College students from India, together with Punjab, make up a major proportion of those worldwide learners.
In 2022-2023, Canada noticed a document variety of examine allow holders, with the Indian scholar inhabitants representing a substantial chunk of this progress. Punjab is without doubt one of the main Indian states sending college students overseas, largely pushed by alternatives in Canadian faculties and universities that supply numerous programs and pathways to everlasting residency.
The exhibition paperwork the curators’ engagement with Punjabi neighborhood activists throughout their residency in Ontario, offering a deeper exploration of immigrant tales and their affect on Canadian society.
The exhibit runs at WAHC’s Group Gallery.
51 Stuart Road | Hamilton, ON | L8L 1B5 | 905 522 3003 x 29 www.wahc-museum.ca
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