Sarindar Dhaliwal

Sarindar Dhaliwal (born 1953) is a multi-media artist, born in India, raised in England, and based in Toronto.

Biography Dhaliwal was born in Punjab, and moved with her family to England at the age of four and grew up in Southall, London. At the age of fifteen, she migrated again with her family to Canada. She settled down on a farm near Brampton, Ontario. Finding it challenging to adapt to small-town life, she worked to save up for a trip back to London, where she stayed for a year.

She received a BFA with a concentration in sculpture at Falmouth University, Cornwall in England (1978), then moved back to Canada where she still lives. She gained a MFA from York University, Toronto in 2003. Dhaliwal's art tells the story of her life as a global citizen by cleverly exploring the complex relationships between memory and place, language and colour, sport and ritual, family and society, and the histories of colonialism and migration focusing on racism, conflict, and identity. Consequently, Dhaliwal's art is simultaneously personal and universal, defying all attempts at categorization. is influenced by Dhaliwal's love of colour which she developed in childhood from reading fairy stories in colourful books at the library. Southall:Childplay (chromira print, 2009) covers an entire wall with her own collection of coloured pencils, which she used to play with. In When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colors (mixed media on graph paper, 2010), Dhaliwal gives names to colours: crushed raspberry, Indian summer, burnt persimmon. Dhaliwal's love of colour is also evident in the glowing colours of 28 ambassador cars (chromira print, 2010) driving around an island of text. Dhaliwal has exhibited her work at many major Canadian public galleries, including The Edmonton Art Gallery and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Ontario. She is represented in the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. An exhibition of her work, 'Record Keeping', toured Britain in 2004, showing at the John Hansard Gallery (Southampton), Oriel Mostyn Gallery (Wales)and at Canada House Gallery (London). Her work is in collections including Canada Council Art Bank and the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Dhaliwal's most recent solo shows were in 2013 at A Space Gallery, an artist-led space in Toronto and at the Surrey Art Gallery in Surrey, British Columbia; Gallerie Deste in Montreal (2010) and the Robert Langen Art Gallery in Waterloo (2012). In 2011, she participated in exhibitions in Stony Plain, Alberta, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Reach, Abbotsford both in British Columbia and at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, India. Sarindar Dhaliwal was the 2012 recipient of the Canada Council International Residency at Artspace, Sydney, Australia.

In November 2016, Dhaliwal's work was featured as part of the Koffler Art Gallery's exhibit Yonder. This exhibition dealt with work surrounding the Canadian immigrant experience.

In 2023, Dhaliwal had a solo retrospective, When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colours, at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

List of solo exhibitions 1983 – Images de St. Pierre et Michelon, Le Centre Français, Kingston, Ontario 1984 – Des fruits et des triangles, Le Chambre Blance, Quebec City, Quebec 1985 – Recent Works, Kingston Public Library, Kingston, Ontario 1987 – St. Lawrence College Gallery, Kingston, Ontario 1989 – Laurentian University Museum and Arts Centre, Sudbury, Ontario 1989 – Art Noise, Kingston, Ontario 2004–2005 – Record Keeping, organized and circulated by the Organization for Visual Arts and Agnes Etherington Art Centre, touring to John Hansard Gallery, Southampton UK, Oriel Mostyn Gallery (now MOSTYN), Llandudno Wales, Canada House Gallery, London, UK, and Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario 2012 – the Cartographer's mistake: Hockey Fields and Marigold Maps, Robert Langen Art Gallery, Waterloo, Ontario 2013 – the cartographer's mistake: Southall and other places, A Space Gallery, Toronto, Ontario 2013 – Sarindar Dhaliwal: Narratives from the Beyond, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia 2015–2016 - The Radcliffe Line and Other Geographies, Organized and Circulated by Rodman Hall Art Centre/Brock University, touring also to The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, and Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. 2023 – When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colours, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto ON

List of selected group exhibitions 1985 – Artforms, Kitchener-Waterloo Gallery, Kitchener, Ontario 1985 – Rodnam Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario 1985 – A Change in the Weather, K.A.A.I. Gallery, Kingston, Ontario (two-person show) 2011–2012 – Collected Resonance: Shelly Bhal, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Farheen HaQ, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia 2015 – Traversive Territories: Sarindar Dhaliwal, Soheila Esfahani, Colette Urban, Varley Art Gallery, Markham, Ontario 2016 – Yonder, Koffler Gallery, Toronto 2018 – India Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art, FotoFest 2018 Biennial (Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, Texas) 2018–2019 – Vision Exchange: Perspectives from India to Canada, organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Alberta, touring also to the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and the Winnipeg Art Gallery

Awards 1983 – Aprons (installation), MacDonald Park, Kingston, Ontario 1983 – Ministry of Culture Artist in the Community Award 1982, 1984 – Ontario Arts Council, Artist in the Schools Programme 1983–1986 – Ontario Arts Council, Materials Assistance Grant 1987 – Canada Council, Explorations Grant