Shrines and Rituals Exhibition Opening

Shrines and Rituals.
Arjun Lal.
Curated by Vance Wright.

Opening Thursday, June 18 from 6pm to 8pm.
On view June 18 to August 1, 2026.

By intersecting themes of contemporary queer pop culture, Indian iconographies, and Arjun Lal’s own lived experiences and future fantasies, Shrines and Rituals is a speculation on post-colonial world-building through the medium of textiles, sculpture, performance and photography. From the perspective of a second-generation member of Indian Diaspora, Lal reimagines ways of existing through characters, dress and environments. In referencing symbolism and deities from Indian iconographies, such as Kali, the goddess of death and rebirth, Lal opens a portal to dream up what queerness, kink, culture and spirituality can be; sacred, authentic, and new.

Arjun Lal is an interdisciplinary artist based between Kjipuktuk and Berlin. Through playful and otherworldly explorations of identity, experience, and cultural trajectory, Lal uses sculpture and performance to fuel cultural critique, shifts, and possibilities for new ways of being.

In response to their experiences navigating contemporary queer culture as a person from Indian ancestry, Lal’s works are confrontational. Driven by an ongoing desire for a queerer world, his works equip audiences with symbols, colours, shapes, actions, perspective, gestures… fragments of conversations and dreams carefully assembled into social/cultural abstraction. Lal is fascinated by the roles we inhabit—whether inherited, assigned, assumed, or chosen. They explore the choreography of expectation, sensation, and liberation from the unspoken repetitions of role-specific instructions.