Surrey Art Gallery hosts Winter Opening of un/tangling, un/covering, un/doing, February 9

Group exhibition threads personal stories on the multi-faceted meanings of hair 

SPONSORED POST BY Surrey Art Gallery

Baljit Singh, Coming Home - Ritu & Gauri I, (2023), 35 mm negative print, Co-Creative Director, NorBlack NorWhite

Surrey Art Gallery presents the Winter Opening of group exhibition un/tangling, un/covering, un/doing on February 9 from 6:30 pm to 9 pm, featuring a panel discussion with exhibiting artists Rebecca Bair, Wally Dion, and Clare Yow moderated by associate curator Suvi Bains. A poetry performance by Natasha Kianipour will conclude the evening.

Rooted within storytelling by families and communities, the politics of hair have been both intimately personal and profoundly social. Hair carries diverse cultural narratives that are usually shared through identity and gender. The beauty one sees in loosely coiled curls or a tight braid, for example, are both subjective—not only in the presentation, but in how hair is communicated to the world.

“I encourage visitors to take care while viewing artworks in the gallery,” says Bains in a statement ahead of the Winter Opening. “Reflect on and listen to the histories and experiences with these artists as they reimagine relationships to hair and redefine beauty standards.”

Rebecca Bair, Untitled (Shadows) (2022), plexiglass mounted inkjet print.

Clare Yow, Saffron coloured sons detail (2023), giclée print.

The exhibition shares stories embedded in the rituals attached to hair, from acts of resistance to sacred reverence. Artists from across Canada—including Bair, Dion, Yow, Kianipour, Audie Murray, Sharon Norwood, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Karin Jones, Baljit Singh, and Kiranjot Kaur—offer reflections on how hair embodies the importance of culture. They celebrate and reveal their responses to an individual’s association with hair and its many manifestations.

Black Arts Centre is the community partner for this exhibition, and will feature a reading nook for all ages titled New Growths.

The Winter Opening will also celebrate the gallery’s exhibits. Josh Hite: A Vista features a multimedia installation on the fabrication and display of theatrical backdrops, and Art by Surrey Elementary Students is a biennial exhibition celebrating the achievements of students and teachers.

There will be two events in connection to un/tangling, un/covering, un/doing including: Film Screening with Black Arts Centre on February 21 from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm, and Conversations and Film Screening: Roots of Love on March 2 from 2 pm to 4 pm.

Admission to the Winter Opening is free. More details are at Surrey Art Gallery.

Post sponsored by Surrey Art Gallery.

Sarindar Dhaliwal, olive, almond & mustard (2010), three-channel video, 12 minutes 45 seconds. Photo courtesy of Surrey Art Gallery