Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu: Banners for New Empires

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Nep Sidhu with contributions by Rajni Perera, "SHE in (m)0tocross Form for the No Pigs in Paradise series," 2018

mixed media. Image courtesy of Patel Gallery.

Rajni Perera And Nep Sidhu: Banners for New Empires

The artists challenge harmful modernist notions of utopia by emphasizing an unapologetically immigrant and Indigenous forward futurism. With over 20 works, the exhibition includes collaborative works by both artists. Both Perera and Sidhu will be travelling to Regina prior to the opening to create a collaborative, site-specific mural.

Through a variety of mixed media, Banners for New Empiresprovides multiple instances for visitors to reflect on their past, to affirm their present, and to generate new knowledge for their future. Here, collective healing takes place through negotiation, acknowledging, and returning to traditions of empathy. The exhibition is anything but an escape. They are introductions to other stories, which exist in past, present, and future, traversing within and between cultures, communities and histories.

Rajni Perera’s work explores issues of hybridity, sacrilege and irreverence, indexical sciences, ethnography, gender, sexuality, popular culture, deities, monsters, and dream worlds. All of these themes marry in a newly objecti ed realm of mythical symbioses, made to act as Perera’s personal record of impossible discoveries. Her work active- ly engages in discussion with the viewing audience about the aesthetic treatment of gender and the non-European sacred and secular body in a popular culture context. Thus, her work creates a subversive aesthetic that counteracts oppressive discourse and acts as a restorative force through which people can move out of repressive modes of being and towards reclaiming their power. Her work has been featured in the Art Gallery of York University (Toronto ON), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto ON), and Art Fairs such as Art Toronto and Art Dubai. She lives and works in Toronto.

Nep Sidhu’s art practice resides along a continuum comprised of conceptual and technical components originating from ancestry, with relevance for the present. His sculptural practice combines language, light-baring materials, and incantation thus creating a third space that uni es endless parallels and possibilities. Sidu’s work is informed by the interplay of script, textile, the poetic wave of architecture, and an a nity for community; linking the ancient with the here and now. His work has been featured in The Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto ON), the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto ON), The Frye Museum (Seattle WA) and The Aichi Triennale (Nagoya, Japan).