***PLEASE NOTE – THE OPENING RECEPTION OF WHAT WE INHERIT ON FEB 15TH HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER CONCERNS***

Loading Events

WAHC Artists-in-Residence: Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek

This event has passed.

July 7, 2024 - July 31, 2024

WAHC Artists-in-Residence are supported by:

Simranpreet Kaur Anand and Conner Singh VanderBeek will be Artists-in-Residence at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre as they prepare for their fall exhibition, Foreign Dreams (Friday September 13 – Saturday December 14, 2024).

Kaur Anand and VanderBeek will use their time in the region to make community connections with international students and migrant workers in the GTHA while curating an exhibition of their art for our community gallery. They will work in collaboration with members of Laadliyan and Naujawan Support Network in Brampton to create new artistic works for the Artists’ exhibition, Foreign Dreams.

For news and updates about Anand and Singh VanderBeek’s activities during the residency, follow @workersartsandheritage on Instagram. 


Simranpreet Kaur Anand is an artist, curator, and cultural worker creating and living on the unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo peoples (Surrey, BC) and the lands of the Anishinaabeg – The Three Fire Confederacy of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, as well as the Wyandot Nation (Ann Arbor, MI). Anand’s art practice interrogates the so-called neutral audience in multicultural society. She uses materials —particularly textiles, language, performative gestures, and photographs—that resonate beyond the typical art gallery context. Her practice is informed by familial and community histories, often engaging materials and concepts drawn from the histories of Punjab and its diasporas and how they have been disrupted by colonialism, forced migration, and global capitalism.

Conner Singh VanderBeek is a mixed Punjabi-Sikh and American musician, pedagogue, media artist, and PhD candidate in ethnomusicology based at the University of Michigan. Their research engages diversity policy in Canadian arts and its relationship to the commodification and tokenization of Punjabi-Canadian artists. Their pedagogy challenges the Western art music canon and foregrounds musical expressions by minorities and diasporic communities in North America, including South Asians and African Americans. They also write about cultural memory and identity politics in the Sikh diaspora.

WAHC wishes to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, CUPE National, the Canada Council for the Arts and OSSTF for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs.

For more information, please contact Sylvia Nickerson, Programming and Exhibitions Specialist, at (905) 522-3003 ex. 29 or sylvia@wahc-museum.ca