Stir Splainer: 5 artists on works at Monsoon Festival’s Monsoon Marketplace

The virtual art market features works by Angela Aujla, Anita Majumdar, Guntaj Deep Singh, Jag Nagra, and Reena Devani

By Gail Johnson

Angela Aujla, Phulkari Salmon.

Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts presents Monsoon Marketplace online to August 31

IN 2020, MONSOON Festival of Performing Arts developed an online art market to help support artists in the wake of so much pandemic uncertainty. It proved so popular that the fair is back in a renewed, virtual form. Monsoon Marketplace is set to be a key, permanent feature of South Asian Arts Society’s multidisciplinary arts festival, now in its seventh year.

Monsoon Marketplace 2022 features artworks for view and sale by Angela Aujla, Anita Majumdar, Guntaj Deep Singh, Jag Nagra, and Reena Devani. Here’s a peek at the inspiration behind a few of this year’s pieces.

#1

Angela Aujla, Phulkari Salmon (pictured at top)

Aujla is a visual artist whose pieces range from mixed-media drawings to digital collage and explore history, memory, culture, and identity in the South Asian diaspora. Her work is deeply informed by her academic practice in postcolonial theory and is held in private collections in Canada, the U.S., the UK, the UAE, Australia, India, the Netherlands, and in Humber College’s permanent art collection. In 2015, Kaur Life Magazine called her one of the “15 Sikh Women Artists You Should Know”; More recently, Aujla illustrated the Historica Canada animated short, “The Komagata Maru”.

Phulkari Salmon (giclée print) is inspired by Aujla’s roots in British Columbia as well as her Punjabi heritage. The salmon are adorned in traditional Phulkari folk art textile. “A representation of the power of community and also an homage to natural environments and ecosystems,” Aujla says.

Guntaj Deep Singh, Run Away With Me?

#2

Guntaj Deep Singh, Run Away With Me?

Born and raised in Punjab, India, Singh is a self-taught Vancouver-based artist who fuses art and poetry. Run Away With Me? is a photo is taken at a train station in Vancouver.

The words ‘ਚੱਲ ਕਿਤੇ ਦੂਰ ਚੱਲੀਏ ।’, meaning “Let’s go somewhere far away”, are displayed on the screen at the empty station, “leaving you with a lonely but familiar sensation”, Singh says, adding: “Have you ever asked someone to run away with you? Or wanted to? You know the burning desire, the impulse.”

Anita Majumdar, Exhale

#3

Anita Majumdar, Exhale

“Aishwarya Rai was my first muse for portraiture work but as I evolved, I wanted to add my own mark beyond just capturing her ethereal beauty,” Majumdar says. “I also wanted to embody the first stages of requited love. This is part of a romance series I started during Valentine’s Day 2021 while Toronto was under lockdown. In an age of censorship and limited proximity, I believe the ultimate act of rebellion is love in close contact.”

#4

Reena Devani, Foga

“This piece was created for Monsoon Market and honours FOGA, a dance event that took place annually as I was growing up,” Devani says. “Every Sunday was spent learning folk dances at community centres while celebrating culture. At the time, I had no idea how much those moments influenced and shaped my appreciation of folk dance and art.”

#5

Nazar Tee by Jag Nagra

Visual artist Jag Nagra is creative director of the Punjabi Market Collective. A Nazar Battu can be a symbol, icon, logo, charm bracelet, tattoo, face mask, or any other object or image that protects people against a curse believed to be cast by a malevolent glare. “Ward off the evil eye with this Nazar Battu t-shirt,” Nagra says.

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