Exhibition gives South Asian artists space to share stories of joy, heartbreak and discrimination

An exhibition currently underway at the Workers Art and Heritage Centre in Hamilton (WAHC) is showcasing the strengths of people who choose to leave behind everything they know for the promise of a better future, that may or may not be there.

Titled Foreign Dreams, Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek worked together to build the exhibition that "would give voice to [South Asian] migrants and workers."

"I think it's really important to showcase not just people's struggle but also their resilience and their grit," Anand told CBC Hamilton.

According to VanderBeek, part of their goal was to ask viewers to "consider [South Asian immigrants] as people."

The exhibition had its opening reception on Sept. 21 and will run until Dec. 14. The museum will also host a virtual artist talk on Nov. 21 with both artists.

Anand and VanderBeek partnered with the Naujawan Support Network, a grassroots organization that supports international students and immigrants and Laadliyan a non-profit that supports South Asian women and girls.

The immigrant experience expressed through art

As part of the exhibition, the WAHC's Community Gallery is showing work by Ontario artists curated by Anand and VanderBeek.

"We wanted to give an opportunity for people who themselves were international students or migrant labourers … to tell their stories," said VanderBeek.

"Otherwise, it would be another situation where international students and migrant labourers were being talked about but not being able to speak for themselves."

Santosh Chandrasekar is one of those artists. He came to Canada as an international student in 2018 to attend University of Waterloo.

He said VanderBeek and Anand's work resonated with him and made him feel less alone.

"I understand the process that it takes to have to [immigrate]. The financial, the mental burden of having to wait and all those uncertainties," he told CBC Hamilton.

Chandrasekar was born in Chennai, India, and was raised in Muscat, Oman. 

His work at the WAHC, called The Story of an Unwelcomed Guest, features images of him holding old photographs with family and friends in those same, now empty places.

The photos were taken during a recent trip to Oman, right before his family prepared to move back to India.

"I [was] thinking about that immigrant experience where you lived in a place for over 20 years, but yet you're still an immigrant," he said.

"Those memories are there, but [they] are etched in those places, but the places are no longer accessible to me."

Anand said it's important for people like her, VanderBeek, and Chandrasekar with lived experience in the community to tell these stories.

"I'm not just coming in and then leaving, but creating relationships and, hopefully, ones that are lasting," she said.

Art that weaves past and present together

The exhibit features mostly textile works, including an embroidery piece with a poem written by Anand about the joy, heartbreak, and discrimination that can come along with being an international student. 

They worked together to embroider the piece — made with hand-woven cotton grown in Punjab and using the Punjabi textile practice of phulkari — and said it was one of their favourites from the exhibition. 

"It was just very powerful, spending hours and hours, day after day, just like embroidering the word 'hospital,'" said VanderBeek.

Dhurrie weaving was another Punjabi practice they used to make some of the art in the exhibition. One of these pieces features photos of the Canadian Farmworkers Union in B.C. and current images of protests in Ontario weaved together.

"[It was] a way to literally and metaphorically weave narratives of past immigrants and current immigrants together," said Anand.

The largest pieces in the exhibition, however, are these colourful billboard-like fabric signs.

VanderBeek said he and Anand took photos of advertising seen in Punjab and, with the help of rug makers, subverted the text and remade the ads.

The exhbit is tied together at the CUPE/SCFP Gallery at the WAHC with a sound piece, made by VanderBeek, of conversations he had with international students about struggles they were facing with added sounds of transit. 

Idea came from advertisements in Punjab telling people to migrate

The idea for Foreign Dreams developed over many years. 

VanderBeek is from Salida, Calif. and Anand is from Surrey, B.C. but both have Punjabi backgrounds and have spent much of their time surrounded by Indian immigrants.

"Hearing stories from people and seeing the impacts that the situation has had on real people's lives was definitely a starting point for us to think about this exhibition," said Anand.

She said it was important to "create an exhibition that reflects actual people's experiences," which is why they partnered with the Naujawan Support Network and Laadliyan.

VanderBeek said another major factor was a trip to Punjab he took with Anand in 2023 for a different project. He said it was evident the landscape of Punjab had changed since they had been there last.

"Every corner you go in Punjab, there's an advertisement telling you to learn English and to migrate," he said.

"And that is something that has just seeped into the psyche of the entire state."

VanderBeek said when he saw conversations in Canadian spaces where immigrants were "being blamed for housing shortages or economic problems," he wanted to give voice to those being talked about.