Arboretum Sunroop Kaur
Thu. October 20th 2022 - Fri. November 11th 2022 see our website: thefiftyfifty.net for current hours
The Fifty Fifty presents, Arboretum, in collaboration with The Bonnie Mccomb Kreye residency and funded by The BC Arts Council.
Arboretum is an incubation system that investigates the quiet nuance of Blue as a concept and material practice. It traverses both physical and metaphysical realms while maintaining various intersections of gender and ancestral histories.
Cultivation of traditional paint-making + embroidery creates a biotope that provides fertile ground for the creation of “future relics”. Each work functions as a specimen to be used in cultural anthropology and while it exists in its own timeline, the entanglement with Blue and Blueness occurs at varying proximity. Historically mined in Afghanistan since the 7th millennium BC, Lapis Lazuli is the pigment used to create Ultramarine Blue. The color serves as a cultural monolith and thread: weaving together various narratives while simultaneously creating new ones.The Blue nurtures a forest filled with portals that transport viewers to the in-between spaces of layered complexities regarding identity, culture, and history. These intersections find a home in Arboretum; rooted in the alchemy that gives rise to speculative landscapes.
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Sunroop Kaur (b. 1997, Calgary, AB) holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2019). Kaur is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in between Vancouver and Northern California. Her practice employs Eastern + Western iconography to decontextualize cultural materials, and create spaces that reclaim/subvert South Asian narratives. Kaur is also interested in creating relics for the future, the work is heavily anchored by her interest in the materiality of time. Using cultural hybridity as a lens, Kaur is able to translate the struggles of a lived experience while allowing for the synthesis of critical spaces and generative dialogue within the Punjabi Sikh Diaspora. The use of mediums such as textile/embroidery allows her work to serve as a distillation of familial and community history— through which she counteracts the legacies of colonial violence and theft. She hopes her work is a restorative force that can facilitate reconciliation and healing for her community.
Kaur has worked on a number of notable site-specific commissions including a mural project for The State of California’s “Your Actions Save Lives” campaign titled Basant (Spring); Stockton (2021), “Immaterial Triad; Lapis Lazuli” public art installation, Cedar Street Gallery; Berkeley (2021) “Platforms 2020: Public Works” public art campaign; work was installed at bus shelters around Vancouver (2020), and a collaborative mural project “Taike-Sye’yə” for Vancouver Mural Festival, which centered around the tragic Komagata Maru Episode,
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The fifty fifty arts collective is comprised of individuals living and working on unceded and occupied First Nations Territories, specifically the lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, as well as the W̱SÁNEĆ, Sc'ianew and T'Souke First Nations.
The programming space itself is situated on Songhees and Esquimalt Territory but engages with individuals and communities across Turtle Island.
As a collective we endeavour to deepen our own understandings of how we are implicated in the history and in the present ongoing project of settler colonialism. As members of the fifty fifty arts collective we continually responsibilize ourselves to the complex kind of space that is the fifty fifty which hosts and facilitates the dissemination of the ideas and work of others.
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Accessibility Information:
The entrance to the fifty fifty arts collective is wheelchair accessible, however, the door is not automatic and we have no washrooms on site. A more comprehensive statement regarding our accessibility is in progress, specific questions or requests regarding accessibility can be sent to [email protected]
-------
Funded by The BC Arts Council and CRD feed the arts.
Arboretum is an incubation system that investigates the quiet nuance of Blue as a concept and material practice. It traverses both physical and metaphysical realms while maintaining various intersections of gender and ancestral histories.
Cultivation of traditional paint-making + embroidery creates a biotope that provides fertile ground for the creation of “future relics”. Each work functions as a specimen to be used in cultural anthropology and while it exists in its own timeline, the entanglement with Blue and Blueness occurs at varying proximity. Historically mined in Afghanistan since the 7th millennium BC, Lapis Lazuli is the pigment used to create Ultramarine Blue. The color serves as a cultural monolith and thread: weaving together various narratives while simultaneously creating new ones.The Blue nurtures a forest filled with portals that transport viewers to the in-between spaces of layered complexities regarding identity, culture, and history. These intersections find a home in Arboretum; rooted in the alchemy that gives rise to speculative landscapes.
-------
Sunroop Kaur (b. 1997, Calgary, AB) holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2019). Kaur is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in between Vancouver and Northern California. Her practice employs Eastern + Western iconography to decontextualize cultural materials, and create spaces that reclaim/subvert South Asian narratives. Kaur is also interested in creating relics for the future, the work is heavily anchored by her interest in the materiality of time. Using cultural hybridity as a lens, Kaur is able to translate the struggles of a lived experience while allowing for the synthesis of critical spaces and generative dialogue within the Punjabi Sikh Diaspora. The use of mediums such as textile/embroidery allows her work to serve as a distillation of familial and community history— through which she counteracts the legacies of colonial violence and theft. She hopes her work is a restorative force that can facilitate reconciliation and healing for her community.
Kaur has worked on a number of notable site-specific commissions including a mural project for The State of California’s “Your Actions Save Lives” campaign titled Basant (Spring); Stockton (2021), “Immaterial Triad; Lapis Lazuli” public art installation, Cedar Street Gallery; Berkeley (2021) “Platforms 2020: Public Works” public art campaign; work was installed at bus shelters around Vancouver (2020), and a collaborative mural project “Taike-Sye’yə” for Vancouver Mural Festival, which centered around the tragic Komagata Maru Episode,
-------
The fifty fifty arts collective is comprised of individuals living and working on unceded and occupied First Nations Territories, specifically the lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, as well as the W̱SÁNEĆ, Sc'ianew and T'Souke First Nations.
The programming space itself is situated on Songhees and Esquimalt Territory but engages with individuals and communities across Turtle Island.
As a collective we endeavour to deepen our own understandings of how we are implicated in the history and in the present ongoing project of settler colonialism. As members of the fifty fifty arts collective we continually responsibilize ourselves to the complex kind of space that is the fifty fifty which hosts and facilitates the dissemination of the ideas and work of others.
-------
Accessibility Information:
The entrance to the fifty fifty arts collective is wheelchair accessible, however, the door is not automatic and we have no washrooms on site. A more comprehensive statement regarding our accessibility is in progress, specific questions or requests regarding accessibility can be sent to [email protected]
-------
Funded by The BC Arts Council and CRD feed the arts.