I am thrilled to have been accepted in Rewilding the Body Eclectic, a five-week thematic residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Culture this winter. The residency is led by artist Zachari Logan and museum director Siddhartha V. Shah. I will be working with the figurative through conversation and artistic exploration alongside a number of other artists. This will the first time I will have the opportunity to actively develop my long-standing figurative practice in an environment of reflection and support.
The Dadi Principle by Laila Malik
A small but mighty publication was released in June 2023 by Hamilton Artist Inc., the location of my fall 2022 solo exhibition of Who’s Your Dadi?
Written by author Laila Mailk, “The Dadi Principle” offers thoughts and reflections on the Who’s Your Dadi? series of paintings.
Malik’s words resonate with searing insight into the position of paternal grandmothers in the hierarchy of South Asian patriarchy while also rightly affording them the status of “a lost council of elders”. Malik’s words situate the paintings beautifully, adding layers of depth and meaning.
Physical copies are available free of charge and by request through the Hamilton Artists Inc. publications page.
The Dadi Principle
by Laila Malik
Seemingly benign, Dadi is quicksilver.
At Meera Sethi’s exhibition Who’s Your Dadi (2022), we are invited in, gently immersed, and the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, the remembered, forgotten, and might-have-been are momentarily uncertain.
But this is not your mother’s Dadi.
Or maybe it is.
The Dadi is not just a grandmother. She is your father’s mother. In some patriarchies, this position holds particular meanings. It can mean that she has passed through various pre-set trials and arrived at the pinnacle of feminine achievement, which is to say, the mother of a son who has betrothed and begat. It often means she has finally earned the right to reign within her prescribed channels—as opposed to the other grandmother, the Nani, who must make peace—or war—with the so-called reproductive failure of bearing daughters, in whatever ways she can. Significantly, it can mean that the Dadi supersedes even the patriarch.
She can be the source of great affection, showering her heirs with rewards for coming to fruition. She can be the source of dread, punishing and policing them for interloping maternal genes. She can be the source of justice, keeping errant sons in check and ensuring they never do to their wives what may have been done to her or to others like her.
Sethi’s Dadi may embody some of these experiences. Viewers may catch glimpses of their own paternal grandmothers in the attire, expressions and postures of Sethi’s subjects—all of whom are entirely imagined by the artist.
But Sethi’s Dadi is also a coven. There is a powerful, quiet multiplicity, transcending class, sub-ethnicity and geography. They might not exactly be friends with one another, one a dream in pastels, poised on intricately carved wood, under an embroidered frieze, adorned in a delicate, eyeleted white cardigan, another cross-legged on the floor and staring directly at the viewer, her red and black mackinaw and hand-knitted orange balaclava seamless over a printed shalwar qameez, her bare feet unapologetic, the corner of a bicycle visible through the open door to the laundry line in the gully behind her. Every detail in Sethi’s textile and setting choices holds specific meaning and sends a unique message—while broadly culturally connected, each of these Dadis inhabits a wildly different world from the next.
Yet, they are nonetheless silently at work together from their respective perches, with pens and blank sheets of paper at the ready in each of their frames. These are weapons and warnings. They should instill excitement—and for some, maybe fear—because Sethi has convened a lost council of elders who are watching and taking note, connected by this material technology, always within arm’s reach. Across class and land and ocean, they exist as a collective refusal to be written out of the narrative.
With her characteristically subtle hand, Sethi has invoked a Dadi Principle.
This imaginational work is precious. The clamour of assertions about who we were and who we must become is cacophonous and filled with forces who would usurp and redirect these ideas to their own ends. Sethi’s question, who’s your Dadi?, is tongue-in-cheek and rhetorical as much as it is urgent and essential. Sethi is asking us, who will we choose, and what will we take forward? They are watching, the Dadis, counseling us to choose wisely, choose justly, choose lovingly.
Our futures hang in the balance.
Dunlop Art Gallery Exhibition & NBNW Talk
Winter 2023 saw an exhibition of my work from four different series (Outerwhere, Foreign Returned, Yoga: A Sartorial Guide, Articles of Clothing) in a solo show curated by Noor Bhangu entitled “ritual intimacies” at The Dunlop Gallery, Sherwood Branch in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was a pleasure having work that spanned ten years all together in one space.
In the closing week of the show, Mriga from NorBlack NorWhite and I were invited to have a virtual conversation together about the shared themes in our work that covers both contemporary art and fashion.
Who's Your Dadi at The Inc.
Over the fall of 2022, five new acrylic on canvas paintings from the Who’s Your Dadi? series were exhibited at The Hamilton Artist Inc., James Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The show also included a custom-designed wallpaper, a hand-painted floor mural resembling cement tiles, and a few installation elements all taken from the paintings themselves.
A small publication with a special text written by poet and writer Laila Malik was produced in April 2023 and is available on request at no charge from The Inc.
Nuit Blanche 2022 Feature Artist
I’m super excited to announce that I will be a feature artist at Nuit Blanche Toronto 2022.
Nuit Blanche is back with Dr. Julie Nagam as this year’s Artistic Director. Her vision is incredible and I am thrilled to be in the company of so many Indigenous, Black, and racialized artists from around the world and across Turtle Island. This year’s theme is “The Space Between Us”.
Colour of the Year will be a site-specific, participatory artwork in the Aga Khan Museum pools that asks us to consider the sacredness and importance of water, the most basic element of human, plant, and animal life. This work engages our bodily senses to contemplate our relationship and dependence on water as it interacts with toxic dye run-off from the fast fashion industry. I invite you to witness the movement of wind and water while meditating on the colour of cloth and participating in it’s clean up.
Thank you to the City of Toronto and Dr. Julie Nagam for this incredible opportunity to engage public audiences in art, somatic activity, and deep thought.