Tavila Haque, who attended UTSC for undergrad, looks back on her experience exhibiting her art at the student-run Gallery 1265, and the ways in which that exhibition allowed her to form connections to the larger community.
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0:05
My gallery night was insane. So my photography consisted of culture and it was a look at what it was like to grow up South Asian in a Western culture, how we keep our grounds rooted but at the same time be open to the Western culture.
0:20
So I had pictures like you know a girl wearing like Adidas, tying her Adidas shoes but she’s wearing a sari. Or you know she’s dressed in a full,
0:29
like I had another girl was dressed in full, like shirt and pants and work clothes, but she was doing Bharatanatyam, like which is the Indian classical dancing.
0:39
And she was wearing bangles and you know anklets and things like that.
0:44
So I think that resonated with a lot of people at the gallery night because I had, that was my first time ever doing something so big and more than 300 people showed up that night.
0:54
And not only that, people were okay, like they were asking me you know if they could purchase my photographs, which was another level.
1:04
So that to me, I was like okay, this is something I love doing, this is something that I’m not only just doing photography, it’s also narration that resonates with a lot of people.
1:15
Because without my narration which I had written on the side, people just looked at a picture going, “oh my god, that’s me, like I get that”. And they’re not even South Asian. Like this guy who came up to me just said “Hey,
1:25
I’m from Jamaica and I totally get that ’cause I have the same problem, you know? I grew up here, but I still have to stay rooted to my Jamaican culture.”
