a crack in the mirror: Artists in Discussion

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Exhibiting artists Simranpreet Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek are joined by cultural leader Am Johal, Executive Artistic Director of the Indian Summer Festival, Vancouver, and exhibition curator Sajdeep Soomal for a conversation about ਸ਼ੀਸ਼ੇ‘ਚ ਤਰੇੜ | sheeshe ‘ch thareṛ | a crack in the mirror.

The artists will also explore where their interests and practices have taken them since the opening of a crack in the mirror at The Reach Gallery Museum in 2022 and the subsequent tour which has seen the exhibition at the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives, the Nelson, Archives and Gallery, and now with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

This panel discussion will be followed by time for questions and a visit to the Gallery’s exhibitions.

Admission is by donation.

Simranpreet Anand is an artist, curator and cultural worker creating and working between the unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo peoples (Surrey, BC) and the traditional territories of the Kalapuya people (Eugene, OR). Her art practice is informed by familial and community histories, often engaging materials and concepts drawn from the histories of Punjab and the Punjabi diaspora, and their disruption by global capitalism, colonialism and migration. Anand is a faculty member in Visual Arts at Lane Community College. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Michigan, and a BFA with Honours from the University of British Columbia.
Image courtesy of Simanpreet Anand

Am Johal is Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Co-director of SFU’s Community-Engaged Research Initiative. He is the author of "Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene" (Atropos Press, 2015) and is co-author, with Matt Hern (with contributions from Joe Sacco), of "Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale" (MIT, 2018).
Image courtesy of Am Johal

Sajdeep Soomal is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto who examines how chemical ideas and practices have influenced colonial political economies. His dissertation project, The Chemicalization of Substance, argues that modern chemistry transformed the tactics and techniques of 19th-century Canadian settler colonial governance.
Sajdeep Soomal works on related curatorial projects about the politics of chemical visualization with artists who are re-imagining, playing with and altering our synthetic surround. Sajdeep has previously conducted research and curatorial projects for the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), The Reach Gallery Museum, Trinity Square Video (TSV), the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC), and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA). From 2015-2016, he held the Archie Malloch Fellowship in Public Learning at the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) at McGill University. He holds a BA in History from McGill University and an MA in History from the University of Toronto.
Image courtesy of Sajdeep Soomal

Conner Singh VanderBeek is an ethnomusicologist, composer, and media artist. VanderBeek’s research engages Punjabi diasporic art and culture in the United States and Canada, and cultural memory and identity politics in the Sikh diaspora. Their dissertation, titled Talking Over Each Other: Diasporic Punjabi Artists and the Ideologies of Public Arts in Multicultural Canada, interrogates diversity policy in Canadian arts and its relationship to the commodification and tokenization of Punjabi-Canadian artists. Their musical training includes jazz and classical piano, Javanese gamelan, and experimental noise music. VanderBeek has also shown as a collaborative artist throughout Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, working in sound, media arts, and textiles. VanderBeek holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology (’24) and an MA in South Asian Studies (’21) from the University of Michigan, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Davidson College.
Image courtesy of Conner Singh VanderBeek