Building Blocks, 2020. Hand-built, archival photography of the artist's family on stoneware. Largest dimension is 28cm, cubes are 14cm x 14cm x 14cm. Photo credit: Ali Kazimi
ECH: Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m curious, ambitious, and somewhat spatially challenged. I am a Maritimer, friendly, and a classic extrovert. I am fluent in French and Western Classical music. I have lived through decades of chronic pain, and continue to heal with grace and certitude. I have a strong sense of purpose. I am an artist. I used to be a producer, and arts manager. I love to write about art and artists. I am also a strategic planning person, and enabler who likes to make things happen. It took me forty years to remember that clay was my soul’s calling. I look forward to the privilege to make clay the centre of my professional practice for the next few decades.
ECH: Briefly describe your art practice.
I am a ceramic artist. I work with abstraction and imagery, teasing form and concept that explore themes of race, identity, hybridity, memory, archive, dis-ease and healing. I have been working as an artist full-time since 2014. I continue to work through series, shifting the materials that I need in order to realize the project I need to convey. I use the wheel, and alter clay for sculpture; I combine slip casting, mould making and hand-building with image. I am an abstractionist who often times uses archival photography on ceramics.
ECH: What role does your cultural identity play in your work?
I was born in 1968 in Fredericton, New Brunswick – the child of an Indo-Trinidadian immigrant who came to Canada in 1953 to become an academic/scientist and met my mother, the daughter of farmers/blue collar workers in rural Ohio. My father didn’t reference his cultural heritage until I was an adult. I grew up brown in a white world. I am self-mockingly BRASP: Brown Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I wasn’t really aware of the trauma or rupture of being “othered” until we lived in Edinburgh for a year in 1973. My world changed dramatically through immersion into a diverse milieu moving from Fredericton to Scarborough to attend University of Toronto. Race has always fascinated me. Where we come from as the pieces that add up to the sum of who we are is at the core of my practice, and has been from the very first “marbled” slip bowls I threw in 2009 when I went to India to apprentice and learn to throw pots on the wheel.
I continue to plumb, research and explore my Caribbean heritage, to begin to understand the atrocities and the marignalized, racialized lived experience of indentured workers, “the new slaves”; to piece together my father’s seeming repression of the violent acts of racism he endured; and to understand my own feelings and experience of living within a white Euro-dominant world. I have recently started to research and explore my mother’s roots and look forward to delving more deeply into this rich history. Both my parents’ families crossed the seas in hopes of a better life in the mid 19th century. These facts, the bits and pieces that make up my cultural identity, shape the work that I create, every work that I create – regardless of the subject matter, they are the lens through which I fashion the art that makes meaning, and strives to shift the viewers’ complacency.
ECH: As a person of colour, what challenges do you face navigating the art world?
When I started out in the world, I wanted to work in arts policy, to make a difference to artists. In the early 1990s, I became outraged at the lack of equity in the arts councils at every level: artists of colour (visible minority artists) were often funnelled into “multicultural,” “folk arts,” or “community arts”, and largely not being seen as peers with expertise in their chosen media. I went to the UK to study the roots of this systemic racism – studying arts policy in Birmingham and Lyon, the largest port/immigrant cities of Canada’s two most prominent settler countries. I spent two decades working to redress the racial imbalances I uncovered – It is only as an artist (which is a third career for me: first, arts manager; second radio producer) that I have truly faced the challenges that I would say I have had to consciously navigate as a person of colour.
The contemporary art canon, the “sandbox” in which I choose to play, is undeniably white, hetero-male dominated. Yes, things are shifting. There is a major shift happening with Black Lives Matter, that I’m hopeful will affect a paradigm shift for all persons of colour and Indigenous persons. I am glad to be a part of creating that shift in my volunteer work, in my conversations, public and private, and through my art-making. We have a long way to go to effect sustained equality, not only within the art world, but within every realm of society. I want to tell the stories of my father’s family and of my life in order to add the under-represented voice of the mixed-race Indo-Caribbean to the canon.
ECH: Could you share a little bit about your experience during the pandemic?
The pandemic has been and continues to be difficult. I had the unfortunate and fortunate experience of being very busy with a number of exhibitions densely packed within a two-week period, and prepping for the most important international exhibition of my career – that didn’t happen. I must have put 500km on the car and I moved over 300kg’s of sculpture in and out of my car. I have suffered intermittently with chronic fatigue issues, and the “moment” lockdown was announced, I fell ill with relapse. It’s been up and down, but very hard to get real studio time in. I was enjoying facetime visits with my mother who was in long term care. She was able to visit me in my studio in ways she had never been able to with her wheelchair. And then she passed. Loss and grief seem to be paired with this pandemic. I also took some time to write about my late father and our lives together. It was humbling to work in a different creative media. I hope to continue with the project as Covid seems to be our new normal, at least at a simmering level. Overall, the pandemic has slowed me down and made me appreciate that the very small things in life are really huge, and I accept them with gratitude.
ECH: Do you think a dedicated “Asian Heritage Month” in Canada is still relevant? If so, could you give an example of how it is a benefit to you and the general public? If not, could you offer an alternative approach for rethinking this month and/or raising awareness of Asian cultural issues?
When the Canada Council for the Arts established their Equity Office they said that it was a temporary measure of redress, and they expected it would fold in about six years. Twenty-six years later it is still operational and the need for its existence perhaps even more poignant than ever. I was involved with the very first Asian Heritage months in Toronto. The pendulum around race and racialization continues to swing, but yes, I do believe there is a place for highlighting Asian Heritage at a specific time of the year within Canada. Asian Heritage is so diverse within itself. Let us celebrate our differences, let us continue to awaken those who believe we are living in a post-racial society.
ECH: Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m curious, ambitious, and somewhat spatially challenged. I am a Maritimer, friendly, and a classic extrovert. I am fluent in French and Western Classical music. I have lived through decades of chronic pain, and continue to heal with grace and certitude. I have a strong sense of purpose. I am an artist. I used to be a producer, and arts manager. I love to write about art and artists. I am also a strategic planning person, and enabler who likes to make things happen. It took me forty years to remember that clay was my soul’s calling. I look forward to the privilege to make clay the centre of my professional practice for the next few decades.
ECH: Briefly describe your art practice.
I am a ceramic artist. I work with abstraction and imagery, teasing form and concept that explore themes of race, identity, hybridity, memory, archive, dis-ease and healing. I have been working as an artist full-time since 2014. I continue to work through series, shifting the materials that I need in order to realize the project I need to convey. I use the wheel, and alter clay for sculpture; I combine slip casting, mould making and hand-building with image. I am an abstractionist who often times uses archival photography on ceramics.
ECH: What role does your cultural identity play in your work?
I was born in 1968 in Fredericton, New Brunswick – the child of an Indo-Trinidadian immigrant who came to Canada in 1953 to become an academic/scientist and met my mother, the daughter of farmers/blue collar workers in rural Ohio. My father didn’t reference his cultural heritage until I was an adult. I grew up brown in a white world. I am self-mockingly BRASP: Brown Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I wasn’t really aware of the trauma or rupture of being “othered” until we lived in Edinburgh for a year in 1973. My world changed dramatically through immersion into a diverse milieu moving from Fredericton to Scarborough to attend University of Toronto. Race has always fascinated me. Where we come from as the pieces that add up to the sum of who we are is at the core of my practice, and has been from the very first “marbled” slip bowls I threw in 2009 when I went to India to apprentice and learn to throw pots on the wheel.
I continue to plumb, research and explore my Caribbean heritage, to begin to understand the atrocities and the marignalized, racialized lived experience of indentured workers, “the new slaves”; to piece together my father’s seeming repression of the violent acts of racism he endured; and to understand my own feelings and experience of living within a white Euro-dominant world. I have recently started to research and explore my mother’s roots and look forward to delving more deeply into this rich history. Both my parents’ families crossed the seas in hopes of a better life in the mid 19th century. These facts, the bits and pieces that make up my cultural identity, shape the work that I create, every work that I create – regardless of the subject matter, they are the lens through which I fashion the art that makes meaning, and strives to shift the viewers’ complacency.
ECH: As a person of colour, what challenges do you face navigating the art world?
When I started out in the world, I wanted to work in arts policy, to make a difference to artists. In the early 1990s, I became outraged at the lack of equity in the arts councils at every level: artists of colour (visible minority artists) were often funnelled into “multicultural,” “folk arts,” or “community arts”, and largely not being seen as peers with expertise in their chosen media. I went to the UK to study the roots of this systemic racism – studying arts policy in Birmingham and Lyon, the largest port/immigrant cities of Canada’s two most prominent settler countries. I spent two decades working to redress the racial imbalances I uncovered – It is only as an artist (which is a third career for me: first, arts manager; second radio producer) that I have truly faced the challenges that I would say I have had to consciously navigate as a person of colour.
The contemporary art canon, the “sandbox” in which I choose to play, is undeniably white, hetero-male dominated. Yes, things are shifting. There is a major shift happening with Black Lives Matter, that I’m hopeful will affect a paradigm shift for all persons of colour and Indigenous persons. I am glad to be a part of creating that shift in my volunteer work, in my conversations, public and private, and through my art-making. We have a long way to go to effect sustained equality, not only within the art world, but within every realm of society. I want to tell the stories of my father’s family and of my life in order to add the under-represented voice of the mixed-race Indo-Caribbean to the canon.
ECH: Could you share a little bit about your experience during the pandemic?
The pandemic has been and continues to be difficult. I had the unfortunate and fortunate experience of being very busy with a number of exhibitions densely packed within a two-week period, and prepping for the most important international exhibition of my career – that didn’t happen. I must have put 500km on the car and I moved over 300kg’s of sculpture in and out of my car. I have suffered intermittently with chronic fatigue issues, and the “moment” lockdown was announced, I fell ill with relapse. It’s been up and down, but very hard to get real studio time in. I was enjoying facetime visits with my mother who was in long term care. She was able to visit me in my studio in ways she had never been able to with her wheelchair. And then she passed. Loss and grief seem to be paired with this pandemic. I also took some time to write about my late father and our lives together. It was humbling to work in a different creative media. I hope to continue with the project as Covid seems to be our new normal, at least at a simmering level. Overall, the pandemic has slowed me down and made me appreciate that the very small things in life are really huge, and I accept them with gratitude.
ECH: Do you think a dedicated “Asian Heritage Month” in Canada is still relevant? If so, could you give an example of how it is a benefit to you and the general public? If not, could you offer an alternative approach for rethinking this month and/or raising awareness of Asian cultural issues?
When the Canada Council for the Arts established their Equity Office they said that it was a temporary measure of redress, and they expected it would fold in about six years. Twenty-six years later it is still operational and the need for its existence perhaps even more poignant than ever. I was involved with the very first Asian Heritage months in Toronto. The pendulum around race and racialization continues to swing, but yes, I do believe there is a place for highlighting Asian Heritage at a specific time of the year within Canada. Asian Heritage is so diverse within itself. Let us celebrate our differences, let us continue to awaken those who believe we are living in a post-racial society.
