SANDEEP JOHAL

2020

Oct 2

For Jyoti, 2019
animation
4:55
Creative consultant: Pennylane Shen
Animation: Bambi Edlund
Projection Mapping Tech Support: Go2 Productions
Photos courtesy of Burrard Arts Foundation

RIVERSIDE PARK

Sandeep Johal’s animation, For Jyoti speaks to this year’s curatorial focus on themes of power and resistance, strength and fragility. For Jyoti was originally made for the Façade Festival in Vancouver in 2019 where it was projected on the façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery. It tells the story of Jyoti Singh, a young woman whose attack and subsequent death in 2012 united India in heated protests and debate around women’s rights and gender equality. Singh was dubbed Nirbhaya (Fearless) by the media and became the subject of the 2015 film India’s Daughter. Employing her signature graphic style, through her collaborative animation project Johal uses colour and symbolism to represent this tragic event. The work communicates an empowering, uplifting message that honours not only Jyoti Singh but survivors of gendered violence everywhere.

This work is an extension of Johal’s body of work Rest In Power, which is dedicated to 12 women from various cultural backgrounds whose murders have impacted her deeply. The women featured in this project suffered domestic abuse, honour killing and femicide. The title of the project serves to restore their power and resurrect their memories. Rest in Power emphasizes the inherent daily threat of violence faced by women across the world.

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose colourful geometric forms and intricate black and white line work is aesthetically and conceptually inspired by her South Asian heritage.

Johal believes in the power of art to create awareness around issues related to cultural identity, gender equality and human rights. Her art practice is an expression of her social and cultural concerns, particularly gender justice. Her most recent series, She Left Only To Come Back (2019) is an exploration of femininity, motherhood, inter-generational trauma and loss set against a backdrop of familial obligation and self-sacrifice.

Johal is the 2019 recipient of Darpan Magazine’s Artistic Visionary Award. She was also recently invited to make a site-specific work using projection mapping technology for Façade Festival created by Burrard Arts Foundation in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, commissioned to paint four murals inside the Vancouver Art Gallery in conjunction with Moving Still: Performative Photography In India, and collaborated with the Vancouver Mural Festival on a special community mural project about the Komagatamaru which involved the de-naming of a federal building. Johal’s work has been featured in CBC Arts, CBC Exhibitionists, The Vancouver Sun, CTV Morning Live, The Georgia Straight, Gray Magazine, This Magazine, SAD Mag and numerous other print and online publications. She holds a Fine Arts Diploma (honours) from Langara College, Vancouver (2007). Sandeep lives and works in Vancouver with her husband and son.

https://www.sandeepjohal.com/
@sandeepjohalart