Surrey area residents will have a rare chance to experience the work of Montreal-based artist, curator, and writer Swapnaa Tamhane, in a solo exhibition at Surrey Art Gallery, starting Saturday, Sept. 23.
The show Swapnaa Tamhane: No Surface is Neutral will open at the gallery (13750 88 Ave.) with a conversation between Tamhane, gallery curator Jordan Strom, and associate curator of adult programs Sameena Siddiqui at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free.
The works on display – large-scale textile installations referencing the importance of cotton in India’s colonial and post-colonial history – challenge the hierarchical colonial separation between art, craft, and design in India.
Block-printed and embellished textiles and works on paper handmade from cotton cloth harness different moments in India’s history of industrial and handloom cotton production.
Tamhane brings these historic concepts together in contemporary artworks that offer a commentary on our understanding of ornamentation and decoration, treating textiles as though they are drawings, emphasizing mark-making and the hand of individuals in a decolonial statement (both critical of and mitigating colonial history).
She juxtaposes textile works made in collaboration with artists from the Kutch region in western India are juxtaposed with her own drawings on paper handmade from khadi (handspun cotton cloth) that has been deconstructed to its base fibres and reconstituted.
“Tamhane’s artwork pushes against a complicated colonial history of cotton, exposes colonial ideas around art and artmaking that linger with us today, and imagines a different way forward,” guest curator Deepali Dewan notes.
“It must be experienced to be felt and understood.”
The artist’s talk will be followed at 7:30 p.m. by an opening reception.
On Thursday, Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m., Dewan will be joined at the gallery by associate Professor T’ai Smith of UBC for a deeper discussion of India’s colonial textile histories and subsequent decolonizing artistic processes.
Also celebrated at the Sept. 23 season-opening event will be all roses sleep (inviolate light), a multimedia installation by Alana Bartol and Bryce Krynski, allowing viewers to experience the perspective of a bee (on display until December 4, 2023), as well as Kampala to Canada, a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the mass exile and migration of Ugandan Asians to Canada (on display until January 28, 2024).
alex.browne@peacearchnews.com
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