Vishavjit Singh found his love for arts at a very young age. He started doodling Sikh characters in his free time. But thanks to his South Asian heritage was encouraged to leave arts for the sciences in teenage years.

He studied Biological Sciences at University of California, Santa Barbara and Biostatistics/Epidemiology in Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley. The 9/11 attacks in United States and the subsequent hate crime wave adversely affecting many Sikhs created the ripe conditions for an artistic spark. Inspired by the creative response of American editorial cartoonists to the tragic events, Vishavjit started creating cartoons focusing on Sikh news/events.

As a survivor of 1984 genocidal killings of Sikhs in India his cartoons focus on the fine line that separates contradictions from righteousness, lies from truth, inspiration from vanity, figment of imagination from reality all within the context of Sikh community around the world. He creates cartoons on a weekly basis that appear on his website, www.Sikhtoons.com. His work has been featured in museum and gallery exhibits, film festivals, youth retreats/camps and conferences. Many Sikh news and portal websites/magazines publish his work on a regular basis. He currently resides in New York State with his wife.

CONCERNING CHANGE

One salient lesson life has taught me, Change is the only constant in life. Born into a Sikh family in the US I had an instant proclivity to the arts. I was doodling, sketching, panting in my free time. My first teenage year it was reasoned upon me to choose sciences, practicality, professional career and money over the passion for arts. In 1984 I survived a genocidal wave of killings in India that consumed thousands of innocent Sikh lives. Life went on and I moved back to the land of my birth to be an engineer then a doctor. Neither manifested into reality. Lost in a sea of humanity in college that looked so different from my turbaned and barely bearded looks, I took off my turban and chopped my unshorn hair to get lost in the crowd. Then I eased into atheism. Discovered Buddhism on the shelves of bookstores in Santa Barbara. Delved into Taoist meditations in Berkeley. Finally for the first time befriended the faith I was born into, Sikhism. A month before 9/11 with my hair long enough donned the Sikh turban. After 9/11 I was the target of ignorance and ensuing hate from fellow Americans who only saw my turban and beard.

The response of some American editorial cartoonists to 9/11 and subsequent events created the spark to embrace my long lost passion. I started cartooning about Sikhs armed with my laptop and right index finger. My evenings and weekends have since been consumed by capturing Sikh frustrations and aspirations around the globe. The inevitability of Change is my constant guide.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHANGE

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

http://www.sikhtoons.com

Watch Sikhtoons NYC Exhibit – When a Big Tree Falls

Regarded as a ‘ Vanguard’ for his piece in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibit, How Soon Is Now?  Sonny Assu continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art by challenging the perception of Aboriginal art.

A multi-disciplinary artist, Assu merges Northwest Coast Aboriginal iconography with the aesthetics of popular culture to challenge social and historical values that we as a society face on a daily basis. His work is an exploration of his mixed ancestry and creates a discourse on we use items of consumer and popular culture to define our personal lineage.

His current body of work examines how we use everyday consumer items and icons of pop culture to define our personal lineage, discussing the use of branding, brand loyalty and technology in conjunction to the ideals of totemic representation and helps educate people on the issues that the First People of North America face.

Sonny grew up in North Delta, a suburb of of Canada’s third largest city and many kilometres away from his ancestral home of Campbell River/ Cape Mudge. It wasn’t until he was eight years old that he discovered his mixed heritage in a rather unique way. It was during a grade three history lesson about a particular group of BC ‘Indians’, the Kwakwaka’wakw. He ran home that day to tell his mom about the lesson, about how he was drawn to the culture and the art: she simply looked at him and said “Well, that is who you are”.

Assu’s work has been featured in several group exhibits over the past years, notably How Soon is Now? at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Comic Relief at the National Gallery of Canada, Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast at the McMichael’s Canadian Art Collection and Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation Part 2 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Sonny’s first solo exhibit, Sonny Assu: As Defined Within the Indian Act, was held at the Belkin Satellite Gallery in Vancouver, in April 2006. It garnered him considerable attention and landed him a partnership with the Equinox Gallery in the fall of 2006.

Breakfast Series Cereal boxes, Digitally Printed 12” x 7” x 3” each 2006

Assu’s work has been accepted into the National Gallery in Ottawa (Breakfast Series and the Death Blanket), the Seattle Art Museum (Breakfast Series), the Museum of Anthropology at UBC (Coke-Salish) and in various other public and private collections across Canada and the United States.  His successful art practice has netted exposure on a variety of media platforms and has received grants from various funding bodies in Canada. In 2007, Sonny was honoured with the Emily Award, an Alumni from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, for his devotion and success on his path as an artist.

His ideas, thoughts and processes are fluidic and ever changing. Ask Sonny what he’s working on and he may eloquently speak about his ideas or he might keep tight-lipped in hopes of creating the element of surprise. Either way, his work and personality will draw you in.  Sonny Assu is Laich-kwil-tach (Kwakwaka’wakw) of the Weka’yi  First Nation (Cape Mudge), the artist has lived in Vancouver since 1999.

CONCERNING CHANGE

Coke-Salish Duratrans and Light box 24” x 35” 2006

My current body of work examines how we use everyday consumer items and icons of pop culture to define our personal lineage. Regardless of race or culture, we use the notion of totemic representation to establish our relation to each other. This body of work juxtaposes two polarized cultures and theorizes how branding, brand loyalty, and items from  pop/technology culture are used to relate to the ideal of totemic representation. The work combines social, economical, and environmental issues with subtle humour to speak to the notion of conformity through consumerism.

Through the iDrum series, specifically the (Red)iscovery series, I was able to formulate a notion of change by how we are manipulated by marketing through media. The series, in general, uses the iconic iPod image, which has stylized to fit within the aesthetics of the First Nations culture from the West Coast of Canada. The work itself lacks the stereotypical narrative elements that you would normally associate with this cultural design style. I’ve removed all notion of traditional narrative to produce an abstracted, modernist approach to “Indian” art.

iDrum (Red)iscovery #3. Acrylic on Cow hide, wood. 20” 2008

The (Red)iscovery series talks about how we as a western society will go out of our way to buy products that pop-rock star Bono tells us to. These (Red) products have been marketed toward our notion of charity towards those less fortunate than ourselves: People who live in the third world, most notably third world African cultures. But what makes me what to challenge Bono’s notion of change through pop-charity, is that we have people living in our own countries that we are ignoring; who are malnourished and who are suffering from the same afflictions that are akin to the third world. Why do we do this? Why are we able to ignore those people who need our help in our own backyard? We walking past them, their hands out, ours filled with a Starbuck’s (Red) cup, “politely” ignoring them through our (Red) branded iPods. I’m not just talking about those who have slipped through the crack or those who “choose” to live on the streets, I’m also talking about the invisible minority of the Native Americans and the First Nations in Canada.

iDrum: Nude Acrylic on Cow hide, wood. 22” 2009

Next door to my grandmother, who lives on a reserve located on Vancouver Island, lays the remains of apathy. A black-mould-condemned double wide trailer sits empty: It’s occupants final left, not able to afford another, now rent off reserve. A stark contrast to her beautifully manicured garden that her nearly 80 year old hands have tended to herself. My family, fortunately, have had a hand in defining our own path of success and rising past the discrimination we still face to this day. We chose to not rely on the hand-out, treating it more like a hand-up. My great grandfather, to whom I see as a man of political and social change, set out to make sure our family would rise above discrimination. But with every door he opened, one shut. He laid a path, to which I travel; opening the closed doors to bring a wider understanding for the change we are seeking.

So in a country as affluent as Canada, we have people living in third would conditions, people who lack in things we take for granted; access to running water, sewage treatment and access to the universal health care we covet as a civilized society. What is happening in Canada, is happening in the USA, Australia, New Zealand: the colonized invisible cultures have been lost to memory in to a  cultural stereotype. We are apathetic to our own people, yet hypocritically help others far from us. It is this hypocrisy that I aim to change with the phrase “How can we help others, when we can’t even help ourselves?”

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST:

http://sonnyassu.com and SEE his latest work on Flickr

Photography by Chris Meier

After living in Germany, the United States, and Canada, she moved to Harlem, NY in 1998 where she founded the group The Young Harlem Photographers, a photography workshop for children and youth. Their work won them the NY Times award at the Art of Change Group Show held at the Time Square Lobby Gallery.

Her more recent photo publication is Wishes in Black and White, a book about race relations in America which was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

She has devoted much of her work to children by reintroducing the role of the arts as a tool to awaken the human spirit and as a means to raise social awareness. She is the co-founder of The Children’s Theatre Company of New York, which has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN, NY1 Parenting Report, and has performed at the United Nations’ Special Session on Children with Nelson Mandela.

Roya is the founder of Nobility Within, dedicated to endeavors that highlight the inherent nobility of us all. One of its programs, Noble-icious! is a program where children explore and polish their spiritual qualities, learn about each other, and support one another in becoming agents of change in the world they are inheriting.

Her latest project is the completion of her novel The People with No Camel, which weaves two journeys of freedom: a ten year old girl escapes Iran in 1981 and a woman’s quest to save her dying forest turns into her own spiritual journey — the search for ultimate freedom.

CONCERNING CHANGE

Art has played a powerful role in bringing about awareness, consciousness, and change. I am most intrigued by the relationship between the artist and their expression of art. At what point does change take place? Does it occur when the artist first asks their questions? Examines concepts old and new? How does one become free of one’s own judgments and limitations which can act as a barrier to exploring deeper dimensions? When I have been most impacted by a work of art is when the artist has become one with the journey of search, empty of their baggage, shown humility and trust in the process, and open to becoming a clear channel through which a higher consciousness can find expression.

Another source of inspiration for me has been to learn though collaborative work with other artists and community based organizations who work as agents of change – whose works aim to elevate the human spirit and who assist in shifting our perceptions, no matter how subtle or unnoticeable the effects might be at first.

CONTRIBUTING TO CHANGE

• Them=Us, Traveling Exhibition in Canada
• Disintegration, a photo installation
• The Orange Tree, a photo installation
• Heart of Harlem & The Young Harlem Photographers
• Wishes in Black and White
• The Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) – Art By Children For Grown Ups
• Nobility Within & Noble-iscious!

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

www.royamovafegh.com

In the studio at The Museum of Arts and Design as a curious visitor takes note of the process, NYC 2009.

Charles McGill is an African-American artist who lives in Harlem. He also plays golf, a game that is still, notwithstanding the ascendancy of Tiger Woods, popularly thought of as an economically advantaged white man’s sport. As an artist, he slyly conflates these different aspects of his identity.

Under the auspices of a fictive label, ”Club Negro,” he has issued a line of satiric mock-commodities for black golfers. For example, a commercial-style display promoting new, Africanized golf balls titled ”The Hard to Swallow Suite” offers brands like the ”New Spook” (”If you can’t beat them, scare them,” reads the ad copy on the shelf) and the ”Malcom X” (”Guaranteed to improve your game by any means necessary”).

Elsewhere, Mr. McGill presents various decorative objects for the clubhouse. A glass-doored rack contains rows of balls inscribed by hand with disclaimers like ”I was never on Soul Train” or ”I can’t jump.” A wooden plaque displays a golf club festooned with dreadlocks; another is entirely papered by reproductions of old photographs depicting lynchings.

The collision Mr. McGill craftily sets up between incongruous worlds — the one traditionally overprivileged and effete, the other disenfranchised and funky — is at once funny and sobering. New York Times – Ken Johnson

CONCERNING CHANGE

As with most sustained bodies or work, the golf-inspired theme happened quite by accident. The subject matter began showing up in my work after I picked up the game – it really was as simple as that. I saw the action of playing golf as creative, like “drawing” and composing space on the earth within a predetermined picture plane.

Each hole was its own framed piece of art. Only I felt like I was a part of the composition – inside the picture. There was a history of marks and directions that I could draw from memory later on in the studio. So I began experimenting with these memories by drawing aerial views of golf holes I imagined.

Shortly afterwards I began using golf objects as metaphors for a larger discussion of racism and identity. While I explored my own fascination with golf, I started to merge this passion with a more conceptual understanding of found object, the recycling of obscure Internet imagery, the Internet as “palette”, ethnicity, identity and socio-political dialogue.

Over the last decade I began seeing the golf bag as “found canvas”, as metaphor, as vessel and as the human form; I saw its potential as both object and subject.

Using the process of collage and “found digital imagery” I changed the identity of the bag while maintaining (or in some cases, re-establishing) its relationship to race and social differences. In the end, I want to create an object that is at first beautiful then thought provoking.

The two quintessential pieces from this body of work are, Arthur Negro I & II. Both are photo realistic, life-sized self-portraits. They represent my defining answer to the notion of Black Art, hence the name Arthur Negro.

CONTRIBUTING TO CHANGE

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artnegro.com