May 2024

This winter AFK is excited to offer an Artist-in-Residence program for grade 3 students, providing an opportunity to work for two school days at the AFK studios with artist Sandeep Johal. The AFK Artist-in-Residence programs provide vital skills training and the necessary dedicated time and focus that gives young artists the rare opportunity to immerse themselves in creativity and art making. During two school days, grade 3 students who are nominated by their school will work with Johal on a drawing project.

Sandeep Johal Biography

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose practice engages drawing, collage, textiles, and large-scale murals. Through her Indo-folk feminine aesthetic, she confronts themes of bleakness, despair and ugliness with their dissonant opposites: brightness, hope and beauty. Johal’s work typically centers around the stories of women and while she highlights female suffering in its many forms, these are ultimately stories of resistance and resilience.

Johal has worked on a number of notable site-specific commissions including a recent mural for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s inaugural #SpotlightVanArtRental project (2021), a digital projection mapping for Facade Festival produced by Burrard Arts Foundation (2019), and a 4,000 sf collaborative mural project for Vancouver Mural Festival, which centred around the Komagata Maru Episode and involved the denaming of the federal building it was painted on (2019). Her work was part of the group exhibition In/Visible: Body as Reflective Site through the McClure Gallery and Visual Arts Centre in Montreal in partnership with the IMPACTS Project (2019).