Dirty Laundry & Parting Thoughts

Zahoor ul Akhlaq
Meera Sethi
Sylvat Aziz
Kulwinder Bajar

Curated by Pamila Matharu

Dirty Laundry & Parting Thoughts is an exhibition of works by 4 contemporary South Asian-Canadian artists, which addresses themes of memory, loss, and parting, in reference to the 50th Anniversary of India and Pakistan’s independence/partition. The year 1997 not only marked the 50th year of South Asia’s independence from British rule, it also reminds us of the uprooted separation of a nation severed on its socio-political, emotional and physical embodiments.

Through a range of media including, painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation, the artists in the exhibition will explore and re-examine oral histories which link them to the pre/post partition years. The information drawn from these histories has been skewed and transformed over the years into awkward feelings of confusion, denial, and betrayal; emotions leading to the polarization of the many ethno-cultural groups within the South Asian Diaspora.

This exhibition is not the media-happy, flag-waving, celebratory approach to defeating the colonial empire. Rather, the project aims to investigate within, examine the consequences of “Divide and Rule” and the hidden elements of our human condition; The dirty laundry.

Dirty Laundry – Catalogue