Simranpreet Anand: Living with the Eternal

Simranpreet Anand’s latest body of work weighs the spiritual significance of sacred materials against the costs and modes of their mass production. Working from a Sikh perspective, her installation of ceremonial fabrics, lenticular prints, and embroidered photographs considers the notion of the “eternal” in terms of religious significance, as well as the synthetic nature of products manufactured to last forever. Collapsing commercial and domestic spaces, her exhibition at The Polygon Gallery will feature a living room – with custom wallpaper, a couch, and a television – beside the Gallery’s gift shop, probing multivalent ideas of worship, value, and sustainability in the twenty-first century.

Simranpreet Anand is an artist, curator and cultural worker creating and working between the unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo peoples (Surrey, BC) and the traditional territories of the Kalapuya people (Eugene, OR). Her art practice is informed by familial and community histories, often engaging materials and concepts drawn from the histories of Punjab and the Punjabi diaspora, and their disruption by global capitalism, colonialism and migration. Anand was the recipient of the 2022 Lind Prize, which includes an opportunity to produce and present a project with The Polygon Gallery; this exhibition is the culmination of that partnership.