Vicky Talwar | Enlightened Mind

July 8 – August 26, 2023

Vicky Talwar is an interdisciplinary artist who draws upon her personal experience as a Hindu Canadian to produce paintings, mixed media, and installation artworks. In her artistic practice, she addresses themes of cultural hybridity, displacement, movement, and memory. The exhibition Enlightened Mind visually represents Talwar’s hybrid cultural identity. In her paintings, she expresses the contrasts of her identity by embracing both vibrant colour and textured materiality.

 Talwar uses reoccurring spiritual motifs including intertwining flower garlands, mala beads, sacred threads, and salt to create a sense of presence and intention while playful brushstrokes and an indistinctly atmospheric background produce an interstitial feeling of transcendence. By combining elements from the natural world and recognized spiritual symbols throughout the expressionistic background, Talwar highlights the space between what is tangible and what is a distant memory. Similarly, her installation artwork included in Enlightened Mind operates under the same theme, using salt as an artistic medium. Inspired by the ritualistic qualities of the mandala, she uses salt as a purifying material to accentuate both spirituality and displacement in her particular cultural experiences. Acting as a self-portrait of her enlightening individuality, Enlightened Mind showcases Vicky Talwar’s relationship with art throughout her life and encourages our community to engage with their own cultural experience through the visual arts. 

To view a 3D Matterport tour of this exhibition, please click HERE