Artist Biography

Jasneet Pritam is a Kenyan-born South Asian emerging artist based in Calgary. She is pursuing a BFA Honours, majoring in visual studies with a Minor in Architecture at the University of Calgary. Jasneet is an optimistic person, interested in the social impact sector, and seeks to explore work that is centered around community efforts.

Artist Statement

My experience as a student of architecture and the visual arts has moulded my practice to question notions of agency within our capitalist communities and utilize visual interrogation to create experiences that pose questions about our current ways of living. This takes no one form. It stretches across the exploration of personal identity in the glory of my South Asian roots, understanding the word “home”, and more recently, through an exploration of play and its power to foster active engagement as a response against the existential dread we experience from the isolating systems we live within.

RecontexTualizing wood panels

This series intends to investigate both, materially and conceptually, an interactive installation that can recontextualize the traditional craft of Phulkari as a contemporary medium of storytelling. This work will be an installation artwork comprising interactive and non-interactive sculptural elements. This project lies at the intersection of the decorative arts and contemporary sculpture, reminiscent of the styles of South Asian architecture, tradition, and conceptual art. The focus on interaction as a core idea also makes this project relevant to the principles of performance art.