Sikh Futures: Curator Talk with Raji Aujla

Curator Talks with Raji Aujla

Presented by Newest Magazine

As a part of chashm-e-bulbul’s approach to inspire safe, inter-sangat dialogue for womxn, we organized 3 roundtables- Sikh Past, Present, and Futures -with Canadian feminists with an aim to speak about female equality in Sikh practice. To further amplify the conversations, they will be hosted on Youtube Live to encourage community-wide accessibility and engagement.

In the third and final installation of this roundtable discussion, the focus of the conversation will be about Sikh Futures - with an intersectional feminist lens, this conversation will prompt panelists to think about what an imagined future for Sikhs can look like.

This talk will be moderated by Raji Kaur Aujla, who is the curator of the exhibit, chashm-e-bulbul, which is now open at the Bayview Village Pop-Up Hub. Over the past 15 years, Aujla has emerged as a leading voice for integrating intersectional feminist theory to cultural placemaking.

The discussions will feature artists presented in the exhibition, chashm-e-bulbul, like Simranpreet Kaur Anand; a curator, and cultural worker who has an interest in the relationships between culture, familial history, and subjective experience. She considers it urgent to confront systemic racism and parallel settler colonial structures in her work.  

Pamila Matharu, who approaches contemporary art from the position of critical pedagogy and using an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist lens, her work culminates in a broad range of forms including: installation art, social practice, and experimental media art.

Lastly, Keerat Kaur, whose work takes shape through the disciplines of painting, sculpture, hand-embroidery, music, and architecture. She gathers inspiration from Indic philosophies to evoke themes of spirituality and fantasia. Her aesthetic lies in the realm of the surreal, merging mundane and dream-like qualities.

Panelists will also include Sami Brar, a Community Relations Liaison for FortisBC who has brought together many Sikh gatherings through her community activism and organization.

The third roundtable discussion will be broadcasted on Youtube Live on November 10 at 6pm EST. Viewers are encouraged to not only listen in but ask questions via the chat during this discussion.

Image Credit: Baljit Singh.

Image Description: uooch neech bikaar sukirat sa(n)lagan sabh sukh chhatr || mitr satr na kachhoo jaanai sarab jeea samat || by Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek.