‘Family’ by Shikha Banerjee.

While isolated with her daughter here in Canada during the pandemic, Shikha took on a journey to create portraits of her family members, as a way to connect, heal and work through her inner longing. Each portrait has tokens and objects from the individual’s life that defines them within the family and brings with it a collective memory. Shikha’s approach to painting these portraits in a realistic fashion is an intentional one. She wants to place people of color in a similar fashion as their European counterparts, and in doing so also address the lack of diversity in perspective when it comes to sharing the everyday lives of people of color. The stories although mundane try to share an intimate gaze into the lives of these subjects, attempting to bridge the gap of otherness and looks out of the colonized gaze through which BIPOC individuals have historically being portrayed.

You can find ‘Family’ on the second floor of Eltuek Arts Centre in Gallery 203 from Friday, January 27 to March 17.