Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 221: Making Legible These Lives — with Angela Aujla
Speakers: Alyha Bardi, Am Johal, Angela Aujla
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Alyha Bardi 0:03
Hello listeners! I’m Alyha with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
On this episode of Below the Radar, our host, Am Johal, is joined by Angela Aujla. Angela is a mixed-media visual artist, influenced by her academic study of visual culture, anthropology, and feminist postcolonial theory, as well as her Canadian South Asian diasporic roots. Together, they discuss Angela’s career transition into the arts, the influence and impact of her academic background, and her art exhibition, My Grandmother’s Dress. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:52
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week, we have a special guest joining us, Angela Aujla. Thank you so much for joining us.
Angela Aujla 1:03
You're most welcome. I'm really happy to be here.
Am Johal 1:07
Angela, maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Angela Aujla 1:12
My name is Angela. I currently live in Innisfil, Ontario. It is a fairly small town. I'm originally from British Columbia. So I grew up there, I was born there in New Westminster. Spent a lot of time between the Mainland and then, of course, my favorite place in the world, Vancouver Island as well. I went to school there at Simon Fraser University, and I did my degrees in sociology and anthropology. So I did a bachelor's and a master's there, and really focused on South Asian, diasporic women in my research. And so now I'm a visual artist, but I'm also a professor at a college here.
Am Johal 1:50
Wondering, you know, with your background in sociology and growing up in the diasporic community in the Lower Mainland, how did you first get involved in developing an art practice?
Angela Aujla 2:01
Well, I mean, I think it's not unusual for like, kids to be, you know, to love art. So that was my favorite, favorite thing to do. It was, it really always was. However, I didn't pursue it when it came to post-secondary studies. And I just, I don't know, maybe it was the, you know, the things people would say about, you know, it's not the practical are the sensible thing to do, or where is the money in it, and you know, those kinds of things. So, I think probably a little bit of a lack of confidence to follow it through, there are so many incredible artists out there. And so I think at that stage of, you know, applying to university, or even when I was applying to grad schools, I didn't think that was perhaps an option for me. So I didn't pursue fine art, I did social sciences, as well, which I, as you know, very, very happy to have done, kept coming back to art.
And finally, I think I was doodling—I'm notorious for doodling, my colleagues will all tell you this—I do pay attention to things at the same time, but I was doodling during a meeting. And I just did this drawing, and a friend of mine was sort of, you know, who I always sat with, was always, was sort of fed up, I would say and said, "Can you just be an artist already?" Like, those may not have been his exact words, but you know, he was encouraging me to pursue it. And, and here and there along the way, you know, I do this little drawing, and somebody would see it and would encourage me to do more.
I think it was intimidating, honestly, to be surrounded by like, going through galleries and seeing incredible artwork. And, and I just thought, well, what could I possibly contribute to the art world. And then I stopped overthinking it at one point, and this was only in 2015, and then I decided, okay, I'm just going to do what artists do and I'm going to see what happens.
And that's when I really started to work on my practice, like work on my skills, work on getting out there, meeting other artists, going to art exhibits, and just sort of immersing myself. And then it just sort of turned into me being described as a professional artist somehow and having works in galleries. So, it's, it's been a very interesting process for me to go from a, you know, not not being an artist, not seeing myself as an artist, as artistic. But then going to the stage where I was so grateful for that opportunity I recently had to have my own solo exhibit at the MacLaren Art Center here.
Am Johal 4:33
As somebody who has been going to artists-run centers, and sitting on various boards and things, you know, I grew up in Williams Lake and so there weren't that many art galleries, first of all. And then secondly, it's quite, unless you know somebody who sort of brings you into that world, it's difficult to kind of navigate or enter into, in many respects. And it also has its own sort of grammar, ways of working, language, like all of those kinds of things that are inside of the art world. And I'm wondering how you made it comfortable for yourself in terms of how you developed your own practice as well, like, in which ways was it welcoming to you? In which ways wasn't it?
Angela Aujla 5:17
Yeah, well, I mean, I mentioned before it was rather intimidating for the reasons that you just outlined, I think. Also not seeing a lot of people of colour in those spaces. Maybe, you know, the the odd, you know, not—like occasional artist that you would be, you know, a person of colour and you know, especially on the West Coast, there's a strong Indigenous arts and culture practice and history, but the spaces and the people who manage those spaces tend to be in their own certain class or category, and I found it hard to—I didn't know how to enter into those conversations with, say curators, for example.
But, I think maybe from my anthropology background and like being trained in like observation and, you know, ethnographic research, I always like It's my nature to just sort of, to watch and to observe and to try to learn, even by not asking direct questions. And so by immersing myself in those places, and looking at what other people do, and what they do, as artists, and I think social media, particularly Instagram was really helpful in this way, because I could see the things that people were doing, because they were posting them. The things that artists were doing, the things that culture—other cultural producers were doing. So I tried to try to sort of gain, you know, knowledge from that and learn what, sort of, the discourse was in the area. So I started that way.
And then I just, and it was very uncomfortable at times, like when I would try to navigate those spaces, but I really just tried to push through it, because I mean, the discomfort will go away, I feel. So, and for me, what made a big difference here and there without my trying to do it, was others reaching out to me. And oddly, this was, well, maybe not oddly, but through social media, people would see some of the work I was producing and some individuals took notice and took the extra step to reach out.
So, for example, I remember early on in my art career when I first started posting on Instagram, Naveen Girn reached out to me and he, you know, I saw he—I knew who he was through just following Vancouver Arts and Culture scene. And he reached out and he made some comment about liking my artwork and then we ended up connecting in Vancouver and had a great conversation at the Vancouver Art Gallery about, you know, all things art. So I made that connection. And through, through that connection, I think, I think it was through Naveen, I met filmmaker and you know, cultural producer Paneet Singh in Vancouver. And, you know, I started to be able to build this network.
And I started to be able to have conversations with people who were doing things and making things and just, you know, being around that vibrancy and that excitement was really good for me. And you know, that, I know, the word inspiring is overused, but it did inspire me to do more and to like, jump into the scene. And I saw that there were people with similar backgrounds to me, who could understand what I was doing at a different level and that was very affirming as well. Around that same time, like around 2015, I met Sandeep Johal in Vancouver because I followed her work. She was sort of an emerging artist as well at the time, ahead of me, but like really active and I saw her on Instagram, and I reached out and I met, you know, we met up.
And it was just lovely to be around artists and other cultural producers and just to hear their—the behind the scenes, to not just see the work and the imagery, or the final product, but to hear the history that went into it, the challenges they faced and that, that shared experience is really, you know, what I consider, you know, part of a culture. So I do feel like, over the years, I've noticed that there's a real, you know, culture that has formed in the arts among the contemporaries that I find myself with, producing with.
Am Johal 9:25
Now, in your practice, you—research plays an important role, you play with the archive, you're looking also at a kind of diasporic experience, a feminist, Sikh perspective, as well. And so wondering if you can speak a little bit to your practice and how you go about realizing a project in the aesthetic realm with the theoretical historical archival materials that you're, that you're working with.
Angela Aujla 9:53
With my academic background in sociology and anthropology, and whatever I've studied, where I've specialized in diasporic culture, I've specialized in—for example, in my master’s—I don't remember the title now, but in my master's work, my project was on multi-generational, South Asian Canadian women's literature, and the themes that came out of that. So the themes of things like internalized racism, or you know, the challenges of being in that subject position of sometimes very stringent gender role, expectations from your own culture, as well as the dominant culture, lack of agency for some South Asian women, how did they navigate that as well as being in a context of sometimes racial hostility, white supremacy, et cetera?
And so, and because those are my experiences as well, like the personal and the political and the academic, all sorts of, you know, come together for me in what I do academically, and it was just a natural, you know, a natural flow for that to inform my artwork. Those things inevitably come out of my artwork, because that's what's always on my mind. That's what I'm thinking about. And so there's that piece.
The reason I also use the archival material is, again, sort of that diasporic culture idea and generations, because in my family, we've had family members in Canada since about 1906. So, very early on when my great grandfather came, and the generations have been here and it's been a fascination of mine, to think about what their lives would have been like, and what their experiences would have been like. You know, I don't have a lot of family stories that are, you know, strong, detailed family stories about those times and about their experiences. But for me, I just wish I had a journal or a history book. But there isn't really a history of that.
And, you know, today I do see that happening with like, archives being built and research being done, from like Simon Fraser University, University of the Fraser Valley, and elsewhere. So the few images I do come across like from, like City of Vancouver archives, or from some of the university archives, from family photos of my own family, or family friend, those are so precious to me, because the photos, unfortunately, don't have, you know, a story to go along with them in terms of something being written. But together, I can sort of piece together that story, even though it may not be exactly accurate, I can, from what I know, in terms of my academic study, I can kind of place those photos. And, and it turns into something that's partially fictive as well, because I'm imagining their stories from what I know.
And I think that's where it fits well into the art world, because I certainly can't write a proper anthropology article on what I imagined their stories to be, but I can do an art series about that. I can have my own—my imagination of their lives and their experiences come out in art pieces. And I do feel that it's also a way, like, an another element to my artwork is that I feel like I'm re-animating their lives to some extent because, especially for South Asian women—and mostly I focus on Punjabi Sikh women, but for their stories, I don't see those. I don't see those written about. I don't see them in textbooks or history books, or in my sociology, anthropology readings. I don't see them historically.
And so it's, it's a way for me to kind of re-place them or re-place them on that historical landscape in the national, you know, imagined—like the idea of national identity is one where those women are mostly absent. And I do see it as I'm placing them back on that national landscape, making them visible, which is why I like the embellished photography, because it's sort of highlighting and calling attention to them in a way that hasn't been done.
Am Johal 14:02
Yeah, so this making legible these lives as the kind of assertion, a mode of politics to reignite life and experience that, that's happened here. I'm wondering if you can speak to some of specific pieces that you're done, where you're playing with this, this material in the way that you, that you talk about.
Angela Aujla 14:25
One piece I did for my last exhibit was called My Grandmother's Dress and that one, depicted—there was a piece in there that I called the Dark Side of the Nation. And what that was, was two posters side by side and on the left was a black and white poster, on the right was in color. And the color poster was a reproduction of a immigration advertisement from the early 1900s that the Canadian government put into magazines in the UK. British magazines mostly. And so they wanted a certain kind of immigrant and the poster depicted a white woman, a mother, she was carrying a child on her hip, and she was placed in—the backdrop was a Canadian sort of farm scene. Looked like the prairies with like a lovely farm or red barns, some cows, and beautiful grass. A lovely, you know, picturesque sort of scene and she was waving and smiling and so the Canadian government, at the time, wanted a certain kind of immigrant and we know that wasn't South Asian women.
And, and so it just was so ironic to me that here we are the nation advertising for these white women to come and you know, be mothers of the nation and populate a nation with white babies—this very colonial project, obviously as well. And then on the other hand, at the same time period, South Asian women, as well as other racialized women, were being excluded from national belonging, excluded from immigration—specific immigration policies were crafted to keep them out, like at all costs.
So the—, I put the immigration poster on one side. On the other side, I did it black and white to show the sort of gravity of the situation. But in that one, I replicated the magazine cover, which was called, the title was Canada West. And so, under that same sort of format and magazine cover, I placed a photograph almost identical to the white woman of my grandmother, in the 1950s, in Victoria at a park. Exact same pose as the woman in the advertisement: floral dress, a little cardigan, a baby on her hip, her arm was outstretched, same age. So here's one white woman, one South Asian woman, both mothers, both the same age, both wearing the same clothing, it turned out, and I just wanted to show the differences of the undesirable versus the desirable, and how they were viewed in that manner by the Canadian government, and by extension, the Canadian white population as well.
And I didn't plan to put that in my exhibit. But it just—that photograph came to me, my sister brought it just in November, and I was well underway of getting my exhibit pieces done. But then she handed it to me, and I was going through these photographs. And I thought, "Oh, my goodness, this really, what does this remind me of? This reminds me of, this looks like something." And I couldn't recall what it was. But I had used those Canada West immigration advertisements in one of my race and ethnicity lectures for, for my students. And so I went back to my lecture slides, and I was like, I think something looks almost like this. And it was just uncanny how similar the two photographs were, like I said, in terms of their appearance, and their dress, so and so forth. So that's why I called it the Dark Side of the Nation, this idea speaks to all that Canadiana like that, you know, that image of white colonial Canada, really, but the, the idea that it was just sort of this idyllic, happy, healthy place. And I wanted to sort of put that into a different frame for the viewer without being really, really direct about what I wanted them to see.
Am Johal 18:18
I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to the connection between theory and art in your practice. Vancouver, of course, is a very theory informed art community—photo conceptualism to many other movements. But I'm wondering how you think these things through in terms of your own practice. But I guess the second question that I would just also ask, as somebody who teaches in a post secondary context, what does the kind of pedagogical approach and being around students, how [does] that inform your practice as well?
Angela Aujla 18:51
I don't know. It's, it's funny, because in some ways, you would think you would start with theory, and then that would inform your art piece. And sometimes that does happen, where I'd make that connection. And I think I do that, but I do it sort of in an unconscious way. Because, you know, I've been teaching and during my academic stuff for over 20 years now, and so it becomes just part of the way I, the way I approach things.
And so, I think when I'm creating a piece, it's, it's, like the academic ideas that I have, per se, if I'm writing a paper or doing a conference presentation, and the ideas I have for my artwork, they, they come to me the same way. Like I'm like, "Oh, I have an idea." And it, sometimes, I will put that into an academic stream. But sometimes I could put that into an art stream. And it's the same idea. It's just manifested and produced in two different ways. So, I don't treat the art and the theory sort of separately, I guess I would say.
But one thing I do is, once the art is complete, sometimes I will come to it and bring a sort of theoretical analysis to it, even though I made it, but I didn't have that forefront in mind, articulated. I'm thinking of—I did a series of four dresses in my recent exhibit. So they were actual dresses, and I use them to collage various elements onto and so on. One of the things on there was a string of sort of vintage wooden, empty spools, and spools that had some thread left. I sort of pilfered them out of my mother's sewing closet in in, when I was in Vancouver last and I was like, I'm going to do something with these because the exhibit piece was about women making culture and that was a running theme. And I assembled those spools and I was like, this feels like it felt right to me. And, you know, it had that idea of women making culture for sure.
But, then after it was hanging, I was in the gallery space. And I just thought, well, the it's interesting, you know, from this sort of the symbolism of an empty spool, and what that represents and in terms of, you know, women's work, and the idea that if you have something that's empty, and you've created something significant—so you have the empty spool, there's no more thread left that went into something. But then also, the empty spool to me was like, being spent, like you've given everything, like, and I was thought back to these women's lives that I grew up with, who had a very tough time because they, from a feminist perspective, or just any human perspective, they, they had a tough time.
Like they, they were in this funny space of being within a diasporic culture where they were subjected to white supremacy, racist hostility, just the unknown language barriers, but then at the same time, they were also ensconced in these patriarchal restrictions that would have come from husbands and fathers and just the culture in general. But yet they were responsible, like women traditionally are responsible for transmission of culture to their children, and if that's not done properly, and I think especially when not seen as done properly, when it comes to their daughters, they're the ones who bear the, you know, who bear the blame for that as well.
And so I was thinking of these [generations]—the generation of women, like my grandmother, and her contemporaries who were here in like the, you know, in the 40s, 50s, 60s, trying to, like, transmit their culture and create their culture, hold things together, all that they gave to like motherhood and being a wife and, to me the empty spool, kind of, like really embedded those ideas as well.
And I think like, an even though I wasn't thinking, "Okay, I'm gonna make this with X theoretical perspective in mind." It just fit with things that I've that I've just been around and read, like, I remember in undergrad reading Dorothy Smith for the very first time and it made so much sense to me and it hit me in a way that none of the other sociology, mostly by men, that I read had hit. And, and I mean, I think her work would fully apply to this exhibit that I had just done, and these pieces that I had just done. So it for me, it's interesting to create something and then after analyze it theoretically like Erving Goffman, sociologist, he, you know, his work on identity and the idea of like front stage versus backstage and all the dramaturgical themes and metaphors that he used and the idea of Performance of Self, Presentation of Self.
And when I think of early diasporic South Asians in Canada, like my family, and how they assimilated and what they had to do to the their bodies, in terms of cutting, you know, the men often, very often cutting their—removing their turbans, cutting their hair, adopting Western dress. Many of the women would never wear their, you know, Punjabi clothes in public for a long time. My grandmother being one of them, who, I believe, only felt comfortable doing so into the 60s, whereas in the, you know, the images, the photographs from the 50s and earlier, were all just the very Western dress. And they tried to, you know, they—and then I thought also like, what about the futility of that. I'm sure it helped to some extent. But regardless of what you do, whether you're cutting your hair, whether you're assimilating in terms of your dress, and tried to present yourself in a certain manner, it doesn't erase that racialization and the way that people are still inevitably going to, if they have those racist views, treat you when it comes to employment, or just walking down the street.
Am Johal 24:44
You mentioned a few writers there that were kind of influences on you. I'm wondering if you could speak to, you know, either theorists or artists that you found inspiration in terms of their work that informs your own practice by, by extension.
Angela Aujla 25:02
I think it's, it's similar to the way my work is sort of like, say, I work in a lot of collage. So, like pieces of this and that, that I've brought together. And I think that the theory is the same way, like pieces of different theorists sort of hit me in a certain way. Or writers for example, the—there was a, you may be familiar with Amrita Pritam's work, who was a Punjabi poet, and she wrote a lot during Partition and before and after, but one quote that I keep coming back to, it's translated from Punjabi, but still, like the idea of stories written on the minds and bodies of women, as opposed to being written on paper. And that idea, that stories are written on the minds and bodies of women always resonated with me because they're, they’re—you know, even though I would have little in common with this Punjabi poet from, you know, from the Punjab and you know, different era, I feel like that that still fit with so much like feminist anthropology and those theories and feminist work from all different kinds of backgrounds. Because those were those stories that didn't make it into the canon or the stories where, if they did, women had to change, you know, George Eliot for example, like having to change their names to be recognized.
And so that idea of untold stories, I felt, I think, I don't know, like, I'm not connecting it to a particular theorist, but, you know, that kept emerging for me, even in my academic career. And then in my art career that this, you know, this storytelling wants to get out. And now like myself, other contemporary artists, we may not be telling our own personal story, but a story from previous generations and trying to bring that forward. So, I guess it speaks to perhaps the more of like, a genealogical kind of idea, like the idea of creating, thinking about the history of the present. And so the idea, that genealogical idea, I think works with the kind of art I'm doing, because I'm also talking about why—not necessarily why, but I'm trying to shed light on today's racism, today's issues around race and national identity in Canada today. But doing so, I'm trying to show how history has brought us to this point. And so that's the, you know, the emphasis on that archival material and the—you know, I'll include newspaper clippings and other items that shaped the discourse in the past, say in the early 1900s and how that still continues today.
Like in one art piece, a dress that I had created for this exhibit, on the back, I had stitched on a map of colonial India. I stitched the words in red, go back to where you came from. And so the idea of, you know, using that phrase that maybe you have heard, I certainly have heard that growing up in, you know, in BC or, and I've heard it said to others, go back to where it came from, but then I put that on the colonial map to show it well, the irony of being colonized—Indian Independence Movement, wanting the British to go back to where they came from. And so because of colonialism, we are in Canada, and then being told to go back to where we came from, which in many cases isn't even that geographic locale. It's, you know, for many of us, we were born here as well. I don't know if I fully answered, sort of, the questions that you've asked, but perhaps spoken around it.
Am Johal 28:33
Oh, no, that totally works. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to what, what are you working on right now? Where are your concerns? What are you thinking about? What are theoretical questions for you in terms of your practice?
Angela Aujla 28:46
Oh, that's, I mean I—like I really love working with historical material and I would love to keep going with that. I love [the] work of artists like Kent Monkman, for example. I mean, such, obviously such, powerful work, but one of the things that he does, where he places himself in history, so, you know, he'll paint himself into a painting that depicts a historical moment, or he'll mix prehistory with current and you know, that mixing of, of eras. And, and I find I've been going in that direction, too, with, with my work because of the that notion of, you know, things like intergenerational trauma, the notion of our identities today being informed by the past, the concept of the palimpsest, the idea that you have, like a surface that, you know—you may go through different iterations of being inscribed and reinscribe, but traces of the past always remain, or traces of the past always emerge in the current incarnation.
And so, I thought, well, how does that work in terms of generations of women, and so I thought of maybe exploring that in a piece. So, maybe I'll do something like that. I have an exhibit coming up in the fall. And I thought, maybe because I had just done this exhibit about older generations of diasporic women, maybe I'd carry it forward into more diasporic South Asian women who have grown up in Canada in, you know, like the 60s, 70s, 80s kind of thing, more of my, you know, my generation and what I did some of my academic research on. Now, there is also that part about art becoming too personal. So I must say, I'm a little scared to do that, because it's like, very, you know, puts you, as one, in a very vulnerable place to tell a, right now I'm telling a story that's related to me or adjacent to me, but it's not my, my story.
A colleague of mine who's curating the exhibit, Amy Bagshaw, she's also a visual artist, but she she's trying to encourage me to sort of lean into that fear and to, you know, to, you know, she says, "as an artist, maybe that's where your best work comes from is delving into something that you're a little, you have some trepidation around doing." So we'll see what happens there. But I will, like in terms of art coming out, I do have a project with TransLink in Vancouver, so I'm designing two bus shelters that will be in Surrey. So, I'm excited for sure to do that. And it will be on sort of a theme that's representative of South Asian culture in some manner.
Am Johal 31:24
Angela, I was going to ask you about, there's obviously a lot of persistence and determination that's required to continue in art practice, in work, in spite of all the odds and funding pieces and those types of things, alongside of work and life and those kinds of things. And as somebody who teaches in a post-secondary context, what's your advice that you give to visual art students that you encountered? And I think, you know, as somebody who is a South Asian artist who has been making work, there's not a lot of people or peers in the same way. And so how do you build those support networks to sustain a practice and work where sometimes the structures of art don't necessarily support your practice in the easiest way, or at least they didn't used to?
Angela Aujla 32:12
I think, I think that it takes some time, but having a—like building a community, and it doesn't mean a community that's your own, you know, ethnicity or anything like that, but building some sort of community where you're connecting with art people. Like people who are doing things, like people who are curating, or, you know, it doesn't have to be, if your visual arts, I don't think it has to be visual artists you're connecting with, but just people who are engaged, whether that's engagement in the art scene of just like being there or they're producing things, and just kind of trying to make those connections and be around them and so many artists are happy to, to share and to do like a coffee or a studio visit. And so for me, that's, I mean, that's what I think worked for me, is like putting myself in those art spaces.
And, and I mean, I'm not the most extroverted person, I didn't go around, like talking to everybody, but I listened and I observed. And I, and even when I thought I wasn't at the stage where "Oh, I can't, you know, I can't apply to that exhibit. I just, I'm not ready. I'm not there yet." I didn't do that. Like I just thought. "I'm just going to see what happens." So I didn't—I tried not to second guess myself.
But then at the same time, I tried to stay authentic to my practice and what I wanted to do, which wasn't easy, because I think it's like, "Okay, should I mold myself into whatever is wanted out there,” or whatever I perceived to be a trend or marketable. I think when talking to other artists as well, I think when they stayed more true to what they wanted to produce, and to develop their craft in a direction that felt authentic to them, I think, I think that would be the advice I would give but then also be very, very open.
Like I took suggestions from other artists. I remember a friend of mine—I used to only do black and white drawings and then a friend of mine said, "you have—your work is calling for colour. It's calling out for colour." And maybe I wouldn't have done color, I don't know. But I was like, well, she, she's—like I respect her work. She said use colour. I'm gonna use colour. It was my friend and Nimisha Bhanot, who is an artist here in Toronto. And then she said, Let's do a painting together. And I was far too nervous to do a painting because she's an incredible painter. And I'm not a painter, but she liked my drawings. And she was like, it took coaxing, but I, we turned, it turned out beautifully. Like we did this collaborative project. It's not something I would have sought to do. But she suggested it and my inclination was to say, "no, no, no," and go hide away in a hole. But she was like, "you have to do this." And I said, "I'll do it." So I've done things that I wouldn't naturally do. That's important too, because you don't know what you're gonna produce. And like, I was so scared to try things for such a long time.
I don't remember where I read this, but it was some sort of—this is a loose paraphrase, but was some sort of quote about how, when you, even when you're doing something like a drawing, and you think "Okay, my next step, oh, I should like to do this next but I think that'll ruin the drawing." And the advice was just, "if your drawing is ruined, it's ruined. But you don't know what could have come out of that next stage of that next idea you had." So the idea of not being afraid to wreck something or not being afraid to make a mess of something because it doesn't always turn out to be a mess. It turns out to be something good as well. I guess that all goes back to fear, like trying to get over your fear of not being a good artist or not being accepted or not doing good work. I think you have to do a lot of bad work before you do any good work sometimes.
Am Johal 36:06
Angela, I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to add?
Angela Aujla 36:10
Oh, well, I mean, I don't know if this fully will fit anywhere. But I, one thing that, that has come about for me, because I guess, maybe, I've been thinking lately about different generations of, like, especially Punjabi, Sikh immigrants in Canada, and because my, you know, my family has been here for quite a long time. And, and like I said, some family was here in the very, very early 1900s. I've been noticing differences, between, between those generations. So I think I—and sometimes people will, will ask me like, like—for example, I just did the exhibit, and the title I gave was My Grandmother's Dress. And one question I had was, why did you say, grandmother instead of like, it's my nani, like, if you're speaking in Punjabi, my maternal grandmother, so it was my nani that I'm talking about? Why didn’t, you know, why would you not use the Punjabi terminology? Why would you use the Western terminology?
And I've been noticing this here and there, just on, you know, not personally, but like, people kind of saying, "Why do you say Sikh not Sikh" and I try to say Sikh, but I always say Sikh, that's my go to. And sometimes it's like a critique, like, you shouldn't be pronouncing it in the anglicized way, it should be the Punjabi way. But then like, I speak horrendous Punjabi, I can understand it, but you know, so. So then, it's like, why can't you speak Punjabi and so that there's some interesting things going on there.
And for me, like, I feel like that is like part of my diasporic identity, that, you know, the fact that, like I was born in Canada in the 1970s, my grandparents were already here. They tried hard to assimilate, but still retain their culture at the same time. I was always taught—I wasn't taught to call my grandmother nani, I was taught to call—I called her grandma. It was grandma all the time. And that was a diasporic thing. Like that is a product of being in the diaspora. And I don't, like I don't see—I don't regret it. Like, I don't have any issues with that. But it was just how it was like, that's what I called her or we said Sikh temple. I even remember some of my aunt's, when I was little, say church, but referred to the Sikh temple, but I knew what it was, but they would just say it, like they were also born in Canada. So terminology like that.
Or names, like my name thing, Angela, like, I don't have a first name, Punjabi name. I do have a middle name as a Punjabi name. But my parents did that as a means of—intentional means of assimilation in the 1970s. Given the context and the racism that they faced, it was their conscious decision to give their children Western names in the hopes that it would be easier for them to navigate the world, to be easier in school. They didn't really directly teach us Punjabi. Because, even though we heard it spoken, so we picked it up, but they didn't teach it to us, again, with the expressed intention of us not having trouble when we went to school. And we know you don't have trouble now when you go to school and you know multiple languages, but they didn't know that. So this was like, some, they, and they didn't, you know, would they be happier today, if we spoke perfect Punjabi, I'm sure they would. But you know, we don't.
And I think those are all aspects of the time, like the generation you were here. This maybe the city you lived in, the community you had, but those are all byproducts of being in a diaspora. So that's something that I would like to perhaps explore further because I don't think there's always an understanding. Sometimes it's read as, maybe you're, maybe you just, you don't care about your culture or maybe you're ashamed of your culture, distancing yourself. But I mean, for me, it's just, this was our culture, like to use those anglicized terms for you know, my grandparents or other cultural things, we were still referring to the cultural things, the culture was still there, but the language changed.
But in the diaspora you have, like, it's like, for me, it's like a crucible, right? Like where you have this, you know, you're under stress. There is a lot of, you know, severe, you know, stress going on. There's a lot of change, like cultural change, adaptation, all kinds of things are happening in this sort of whirlwind and then you come out with—something new is created, like through that crucible, there's something new that's created. So to me, like a diasporic existence is a diasporic culture. It's not a transplanted culture. It's not a dual culture that's completely like dichotomous East Meets West and they're separate. And it's not like, hyphenated identity of like, my Western identity conflicting with my Punjabi identity. That's not how I, that's not how my identity was formed. It was formed specifically as diasporic and so those things were always melded together in different ways.
Am Johal 41:23
Thank you so much for sharing that. The layered complexities of diaspora often times get flattened out and those nuances and complexity get left out, but you, you certainly take it up in your, your art practice. I just wanted to say, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar, Angela.
Angela Aujla 41:43
It was absolutely my pleasure to be here and also to be involved with this particular podcast. I love the work that you do and then of course it being my alma mater as well.
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Alyha Bardi 41:57
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our episode with Angela Aujlal! Head to the show notes to learn more about the resources mentioned in the show. You can follow us on social media at sfu_voce to keep up to date on new podcast releases. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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