Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu: Banners for New Empires at The Mackenzie Gallery

Curated by Tak Pham , organized and circulated by The Mackenzie Gallery and Patel Gallery

16 NOVEMBER 2019 – 23 FEBRUARY 2020

3475 Albert St, Regina, SK S4S 6X6

Artists Rajni Perera and Nep Sidhu combine languages of ancestral technology and science fiction to create a parallel visual universe. Inside this world, visitors can learn and heal through stories from the artists’ new empires. The artists challenge harmful modernist notions of utopia by emphasizing an unapologetically immigrant and Indigenous forward futurism.

With over twenty artworks including collaborations by both artists, Banners for New Empires provides multiple instances for visitors to reflect on their past, to affirm their present, and to generate new knowledge for their future. Here, collective healing takes place through negotiating, acknowledging, and returning to traditions of empathy. The exhibition is anything but an escape. They are introductions to other stories, which exist in past, present, and future, traversing within and between cultures, communities and histories.