Writer in Residence: Aaditya Aggarwal 

Our writer-in-residence Aaditya Aggarwal produced four texts that responded to SAVAC’s 30 year archive. These texts have culminated in a beautiful publication that we are excited to share with our community. Aaditya received editorial support and mentorship through SAVAC.

Publication texts include: 

Let Me List For You The Heat Inside
P. Mansaram and the Pieces of Summer

Mermaid, Pilgrim, Spectator
Rasha Salti Curates a Deep Sea Cinema

Translations of Exile and Entrapment
Parastoo Anoushahpour’s The Time That Separates Us

Harman’s Interlude
Inspired by Nimisha Srivastava’s Chadariya

Coinciding with our 30th-year anniversary, this program aims to build a meaningful relationship
with a writer who is interested in SAVAC’s current work as well as history as an organization.
This moment asks us to reflect on the current conditions of art criticism and review, given the
number of publications that have reduced print runs or shut down entirely. We are also
concerned by the lack of writing by people of color about the work of artists, curators, and/or
organizations run by people of color. For these reasons, we are offering a platform that
supports writers both emerging and established to build relationships with us and our
community of artists based on collaboration, reciprocity, and generative discourse. For the
duration of the residency, Aaditya will produce 4 written pieces/projects to be published on various platforms of their choosing about the current programming of SAVAC (2022-2023).

Aaditya Aggarwal is a film curator and writer based in Toronto. Aaditya has contributed writing to publications like In Review Online, Artes Mundi 10 Journal, Gleaning, C Magazine, Rungh Magazine, POV Magazine, and Canadian Art. He has also curated films for TIFF, Images Festival, Regent Park Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, and London Ontario Media Arts Association. He was the 2023 Warner Bros Curatorial Fellow at TIFF, and has previously acquired curatorial fellowships at Archive/Counter-Archive, Canyon Cinema, and The Flaherty Seminar. Currently, Aaditya works at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and serves as a collective member of Sanghum Film.