Meet the Artists as Healers 2024-25

 

We’re thrilled to announce Varsha Gill and Shahir Krishna as this year’s Artist as Healer duo!

“Healing ourselves is healing our (collective) futures; and the generations who have yet to land on this earth”

Over the next 5 months, Varsha and Shahir will bring together youth, seniors, and healthcare professionals in community-based art workshops that invite people to contemplate their relationship with grief and death. Rooted in the idea of healing through ceremony, where one can be witnessed (or with-nessed, to be with), in community, this interdisciplinary project will bring together somatic textile arts, contemplative practices, deep listening circles and community building.

“Connecting to my creativity has been deeply healing for me; both as a tool of emotional expression as well as
a way to dream into being the world I want to live in. I cannot
wait to continue working towards this vision through
our Artist as Healer project, and
I am beyond grateful to Indian Summer Festival for the opportunity.” – Varsha Gill

Varsha and Shahir are thrilled to braid together their artistic skills and embark on a journey to explore how somatic facilitation techniques, slow-textile arts, and contemplative performance practices can all be used as tools for conscious inner work to help transform and expand our shared relationships to mortality. They ask, How may the meditative aspects of natural dyeing, ritualistic performance, and community dialogues about death deepen our intimacies with ourselves, our families, our growing communities, and time itself? By considering life in reverse, Varsha and Shahir believe we can all gain new insights into what is most important for us to strive for in our lifetimes.

From January to July, they will research, design, and facilitate workshops on these themes, inviting intergenerational BIPOC communities and healthcare professionals to join in their offerings. Their project will culminate in an artistic exhibition and/or event at the Indian Summer Festival 2025, showcasing their collective learnings

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Varsha Gill (She/her)

Varsha is a textile-artist, filmmaker, community arts facilitator, and social worker who believes in the transformative power of art for social and environmental justice. Raised on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, with family roots in Delhi and Punjab, her work envisions a world where people and land nurture each other as good medicine. Varsha is currently pursuing a Master’s of Social Work at the University of Victoria, integrating land and arts-based practices into a trauma-informed, decolonial, healing approach. Alongside her studies, she facilitates discussions about destigmatizing menstruation with her film, Bleed With Me; co-runs free community skill-sharing workshops through @slub_club; and creates naturally dyed textiles with garden-grown plants as @dyedsmiling.

Varsha strives to create spaces where creativity meets care, offering novel pathways for collective growth and connection. She is honoured to work alongside Shahir Qrishnaswamy as this year’s Artists as Healers.

Shahir Krishna (he/they)

Shahir is a multimedia artist, holistic educator, trauma-informed yoga teacher, somatic counselor, and integral facilitator. His current life’s work is to take the leap to support all beings in restoring a loving connection with themselves, communities, and earth through arts-based education. He holds a master’s degree in Contemplative Education from SFU (2023), a bachelor’s in Film and Cultural Studies from McGill (2015). Born in Malawi with ancestry hailing from Karnataka and Gujarat, Shahir is committed to ‘inner’ and outer structural change informed by anti-oppressive pedagogy, trauma-informed education and intentional practices of decolonization. He roots his pedagogical approach in Buddhist and animist wisdom, alongside integral theory and developmental psychology.

His multidimensional creative practice weaves performance, costume dance, poetry, song and sculpture into a grand cosmic inquiry about trauma, healing and liberation. He has showcased artworks in Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as presented films at festivals in London, Lahore, and New York City. He is a committed Vipassana meditation practitioner and over the last three years has helped organize the first two successful LGBTQ+ Vipassana meditation retreats in Canada.

This project is supported by the Vancouver Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canada India Network Society (CINS).