Pamila Matharu has been a practising multi-disciplinary artist and educator in Toronto for over 20 years. In their series of three zines (collectively titled Legacies Unbound: For the Love of Toronto) for the Toronto Biennial of Art, they explore the legacies of arts culture in Toronto, and specifically research how BIPOC artists and youth have been represented in arts spaces and the media starting in the 1990s.

Zine One: Where were you in ‘92? explores the past.

Archives are usually government collections of documents related to “official” histories. They are made accessible to people wanting to gather facts about the past from primary sources, including letters, photographs, reports, notes, memos, etc.

But the reality is, archives often leave out racialized experiences and voices. So where are these stories found? Matharu explores the ideas of embodied archives, found in the sharing of personal stories. Matharu shares their own experiences as a Sikh-Panjabi youth growing up in Toronto. At the pivotal age of 18, Matharu participated in the 1992 Yonge Street Uprising, [1] a response to when a young Black man named Raymond Constantine Lawrence was shot and killed by a police officer. This uprising was organized in protest of police violence. The protest also expressed solidarity with the L.A. Rebellion [2] which emerged from the acquittal of three police officers in the severe beating of a young Black American named Rodney King.

Coming out of this period of social re-awakening (just after the Kanesatake Crisis in 1990) [3], a mentorship program called Fresh Arts was formed in 1992 through provincial funding to amplify anti-racism and social reform for Black and Indigenous youth. Matharu was a mentee of this program starting in 1994 when they opened it up to racialized students more broadly. They explored their own identities through proximities and adjacencies to the city’s Black and Indigenous visual arts culture. Matharu credits their mentors – Winsom Winsom, Itah Sadu, Marie Mumford and Lillian Allen, the founders of the Fresh Arts program – for helping them find their voice as a young artist growing up in a time of under-representation of racialized artists in the city’s arts and culture spaces (including the media).

With contributions from their mentors as well as curators Emilie Chhangur and Phillip Monk, Zine One: Where Were You in ’92? explores what counter-archiving looks like starting with the 1992 Uprising and the formation of the Fresh Arts program.

Note that Zine Two: Paving It Forward features a transcribed and edited discussion between curators, artists, and scholars Andrea Fatona, Deepali Dewan, Emilie Chhangur, Pamila Matharu, and Lisa Myers. This Zine explores the legacy of Fresh Arts and the state of visual culture in Toronto today. Zine Two will be available in printed version during the Biennial at 32 Lisgar Street as well as online. A third zine will propose views on futurities by tracing Matharu’s TBA 2024 installation and related programs taking place during the Biennial. Zine Three will be released in early 2025.

[1] Bishop, A. (2022) “Documentary on Yonge Street uprising available for free viewing.” The Brock News. Retrieved from https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2022/05/documentary-on-yonge-street-uprising-available-for-free-viewing/

[2] Ligon, T. (2022) “Frustration & Fire: The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising.” Rediscovering Black History. Retrieved from https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2022/04/29/frustration-fire-the-1992-los-angeles-uprising/

[3] de Bruin, T. (2023) “Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis).” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/oka-crisis 

DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT
Resource Guide
Tool: Where were you in '92?


Coming soon!

Suggested Age

Intergenerational

Curriculum Links

Social Studies, History, Civics, English, Diasporic Studies, Canadian Studies

Share Your Work

Contribute to our Poster Wall in the Public Programming and Learning space at 32 Lisgar Street! When you drop off your poster, fill out an optional information slip so that we can credit the artist behind the artwork.

About the Contributors

Pamila Matharu (they/them) is a settler of Panjabi, Indian descent (Jalandhar and Bhanolangha – village of Kapurthala district, pre-partition Lahore). They were born in Birmingham, England, arrived in Canada in 1976, and are now based in Tkarón:to/Toronto – Treaty 13 territory. They approach contemporary art from the position of critical thinking and learning and using an interdisciplinary and intersectional feminist lens in their work, with a focus on counter-archival studies. Their work culminates in a broad range of forms including installation art, social practice, and experimental media art. Matharu’s installation at 32 Lisgar Street presents their life-long research on representation of diverse cultures in media, art and culture, beginning with the 1992 Yonge Street Uprising and the subsequent formation of Fresh Arts and its legacies.

Image Credit: Pamila Matharu, tere naal_with you, 2024. On view at 32 Lisgar as part of the Toronto Biennial of Art, 2024. Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art. Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid.