Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 highlights of Indian Summer Festival 2022

An art installation of a banyan tree, queer expression through bharatanatyam dance, and more are on the diverse program

By Gail Johnson

Arun Mathai and Sujit Vaidya, OFF CENTRE.

INDIAN SUMMER FESTIVAL is back for 2022, running from July 7 to 17, its belief in the transformative power of the arts stronger than ever. This year’s theme is Inner/Outer Climates, and the breadth of events on offer reflects the fest’s focus on bridging cultures, sparking conversation, opening minds, and healing. In addition to Arooj Aftab in Concert, which marks the Vancouver debut of the first Pakistani artist to ever win a Grammy; The O Show: The Many Worlds of Orene Askew; and Modern Biology, where Tarun Nayar makes music out of mushrooms, here are a few other high fest highlights.

#1

Under the Banyan Tree
July 7 to 17 at Ocean Art Works Pavilion

ISF feature artist Kimira Reddy, a Sunshine Coast-based set and props designer, re-created India’s national tree, found in the heart of so many villages. The art installation invites people to stop and rest for a while under the tree’s canopy. In a partnership of ISF and One Tree Planted,  one tree for every dollar donated during the fest will be planted in areas of B.C. ravaged by wildfires.

#2

Imaginarium: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
July 9 from 7 to 9:30 pm at Performance Works

Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Rueben George, Robyn Maynard, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson join ISF artistic director Sirish Rao and Jarrett Martineau, curator-in-residence at the Chan Centre for the Arts,  for an evening of big ideas, challenging conversations, and inspiring stories centred around the personal and political forces that shape our lives and the world around us. Featuring live musical performances by Juno award-winning jazz guitarist Gordon Grdina and sitar maestro Mohamed Assani, the event also serves as the book launch for Maynard and Simpson’s Rehearsals for Living.

Klein’s roles include that of founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice; Rueben George is an Indigenous community organizer and spiritual leader and manager of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s Sacred Trust initiative; and Ghosh, author of The Nutmegs Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, among many other books, is a winner of the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor. Maynard is a Black feminist scholar-activist and author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present, while renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artistBetasamosake Simpson is the author of seven books, including the 2021 novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. 

#3

OFF CENTRE
July 12 from 8 to 10 pm at Performance Works

 Dancers Sujit Vaidya and Arun Mathai explore queer identity as they work with and around master drummer Curtis Andrew’s live percussion. As a queer artist of colour, Vaidya trained as a classical bharatanatyam dancer who blends traditional dance forms with a modern understanding of identity.

Yogacharini Maitreyi.

#4

Song of the Breath
July 14 from 7 to 9 pm at Performance Works

Yogacharini Maitreyi is the inaugural healer at Indian Summer’s ‘Artist as Healer’ project in partnership with Canada India Network Society. For 25 years, she has taught yoga and tantra to people around the globe, including Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, prisoners in Sweden, an all Islamic group in Bangladesh, emerging practitioners in Dubai, seasoned practitioners in Hong Kong, yoga teachers in Vancouver, and more. Sḵwx̱wú7mesh elder and sculptor Robert Yelton opens the evening, which includes a screening of Maitreyi’s short film “Karma: Song of the Breath”; a discussion of the complex art of healing; and a 45-minute musical, meditative, mindful movement journey of pranayama, breath, and soul song (kirtan) to help heal your inner child.

Agam Darshi. Photo by Kevin Clark

#5

5×15: The Art of the Wild
July 15 from 8 to 10 pm at Performance Works

5x15 is a global speakers series that features five speakers, each getting the mic for 15 minutes to share a topic they’re deeply passionate about. Since 2014, the Indian Summer Festival has hosted the only Canadian iteration of 5x15. This year’s lineup includes actor, screenwriter, and director Agam Darshi “on wildness in individuals, and the personal, social and political climates that thwart or encourage it”; Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life, on how fungi can change the world; environmental advocate Anjali Appadurai on climate justice and collective action; multi-dimensional musician Ruby Singh on Polyphonic Garden, his musical project aligned with the solar cycle that converts electrical data from plants and fungi into sound; and a two-in-one conversation between the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta and Booker Prize-nominated writer Avni Doshi on a forthcoming film. Comedian Kamal Pandya hosts.

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