What happens when you place three artists with a common thread of exploring Panjab in their work but also the beyond. The beyond that isn’t very much explored in mainstream voices, whether that is love, sexuality, loneliness, the between-ness feelings. 

This event will be a self-facilitated dialogue between Rupinder, Supriya and Nikita. Looking past the stereotypical image of Panjab and what it means to be Panjabi women today. We’ll be looking at their individual journeys as artists through their writings, poetry and discoveries. Through discussions we will hear about the various multitudes within their work.

Speakers Biography:

Nikita Azad (Nikita Arora; she/they) is a writer and a doctoral scholar in history at the University of Oxford; she is researching the history of the body, particularly the sexed body, and the self in colonial Punjab (1890-1947) as a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar (India and Hertford 2018). She often writes about gender, sexuality, personhood, and human-nonhuman relationships, and her writings - essays, articles, and poems - have appeared in The Guardian, History Workshop Journal, Bad Lilies, Longreads, The Tribune, Punjabi Tribune, Aeon, and other publications. She has spoken about her work (academic and otherwise) on BBC Radio 6, Think Kera (NPR), Sikh Archive, and other places. She is the author of Dakhalandazi, a Punjabi essay collection on gender-based violence in Punjab, and she was longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing in 2021.

Roo Kaur Dhissou is an artist and doctoral researcher who works with communities, diasporas and her own histories. Using community engaged practice, craft, cooking, performance and installation she explores how communal and individual identities are formed. Roo has worked with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, New Art Gallery Walsall, The Bluecoat, Tate Liverpool, Primary, Eastside Projects, Ikon Gallery and more recently internationally in Spain, Canada and Poland via residencies. She is currently working on a practice-based PhD, fully funded by AHRC. Her title is, Cultural Dysphoria: exploring British Asian women artists’ experiences through arts practices. Roo is the recipient of several awards, most notably the Tate Liverpool artist award 2020 and is part of permanent collections in New Art Gallery Walsall, Surrey Art Gallery and The Arts Council Collection.

Rupinder Kaur Waraich (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the West Midlands. Her work explores the feminine narrative and gaze through storytelling looking at linguistic intersections of language, body, history, sexuality and spirituality. Her poetry collection Rooh was published with Verve Poetry Press in 2018. She’s been a BBC New Creative, part of Kali Theatre’s Discovery program, India-UK Creative Industries at 75 and Tara Theatre, Artists Make Space.  Her work has been published in SPAKE Dialect and Voices from the West Midlands, Lumin Journal, Wild Court, Under the Radar Magazine, Wasafiri , 14 Poems, Routledge India, among others. She is further working on experimenting with movement, dance and poetry through being awarded Developing your Creative Practice Grant.

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Date: Saturday 3rd February

Time: 2:00pm

Venue: Wolverhampton Art Gallery

Price: £8 (+BF)