Art Manzil and The New Other are delighted to jointly announce an exhibition of work by Par Nair and Pixel Heller. This is the first time their work is being exhibited together.

In this exhibition Pixel and Par further develop ideas central to their practices, while bringing their work into productive dialogue. As members of the South Indian and Afro-Caribbean diasporas in Toronto, both artists continue their investigations into ancestral and familial roots, drawing from personal archives, experience, tradition and cultural practice. 

The artists are equally concerned with the present. Far from nostalgic reminiscence or memorialisation, theirs is an act of creation. Pixel and Par use colour with purposeful joy, innovating with form, pattern and texture, sometimes incorporating specific cultural symbols, while often resisting such associations. As they feel out tensions inherent in the idea of home - belonging/separation : comfort/confinement, their work becomes immediately relevant, even urgent, within their shared context as Toronto-based diaspora artists today. 

This joint body of work, and the conversation it sparks, mediates between the elsewhere and the here and now, contributing to a collective archive of the diasporic experience. This is creative expression deployed to inform encounters yet to be had. This is diasporic futurism.