Borderless Solidarities
2025 Curatorial Theme
With the closures of thought all around us in an era of hardened borders, resurgent strains of authoritarianism and violent expulsions, the urgency to think and live otherwise intensifies. In an unravelling world, we invoke an audacious and unfashionable idea – an insurgent solidarity that refuses the inertias of this troubled time.
We hold deviously the idea that the world of arts and culture bears the distinctive power to unfold a possible countersignature to the present hour. Through acts of deep hospitality and breathing together, we intend to fracture the inevitability of the inherited storyline and ricochet into public encounters of the possible.
We ask, how can we be together today? What is the time of dreaming? How to amplify the whispered gestures of the periphery? To listen well. To move beyond estrangement. To laugh, to gather, to persist in the face of impunity. To court the ecstatic trance. To disappear and reappear. To reinhabit the capacity to touch and feel. To assemble a brief refuge for the imperishable, a defense of the sensual. A bumpy carriage ride where both tradition and change have room for maneuver. An open door to the stranger, the neighbour and the passerby. Always an insistence on promiscuous alliances and borderless solidarities. To leave open the possibility of the possibility of something new.
Welcome to the Indian Summer Festival 2025. Bring your friends.
- Borderless Solidarities: Storytelling in Ruptured Times
Friday, July 4, 2025
7:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m.
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3R7 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/borderless-solidarities
https://www.showpass.com/borderless-solidarities/
Join us as we raise a glass to 15 incredible years of the Indian Summer Festival! We’re kicking off our milestone edition with an intimate evening of contemplation, connection, and celebration.
Borderless Solidarities: Storytelling in Ruptured Times brings together Minelle Mahtani, Adel Iskandar, Baljit Sangra, and Nermin Gogalic; thinkers, writers and artists whose work is rooted in memory, migration, resistance, conflict and the power of narrative to shape how we see ourselves and each other.
It’s an invitation to reflect on the stories we tell, the ones we silence, and the ones that slip through the cracks. From journalism to film to writing, these voices explore how storytelling can open up space for new stories, especially in times of profound rupture.
How do we tell stories across borders? How do we honour complexity without resolution? What if storytelling is less about answers and more about attuning ourselves to deeper questions?
Join us for an evening of critical conversation, a chance to sit with stories that unsettle, illuminate, and expand the sense of what’s possible.
The evening also features a behind the scenes Festival overview with Curator in Residence Am Johal and a complimentary cocktail at our post-talk reception. Expect rich dialogue, old friends, new faces, and that unmistakable Indian Summer warmth.
Let the festivities begin.
- Tell Me
Saturday, July 5, 202512:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 12, 20255:00 p.m.
The Fishbowl on Granville Island
100-1398 Cartwright Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3T5 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/tell-me
What do you carry that no one sees? What happens when you speak it aloud?
Boca del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series & Indian Summer Festival co-present Tell Me by multimedia artist Anamika Deb from Montreal. The installation opens on July 5th and runs to July 12th at the Fishbowl on Granville Island.
Tell Me is an intimate, interactive installation where you’re invited to enter a quiet space, alone, and share a secret. In return, you’ll hear stories gathered from others who’ve done the same. Their voices, dreams, and confessions create a web of connection, reminding us we’re not as alone as we think.
In a world where borders and division are rising, Tell Me offers a moment of connection. By weaving together individual stories, dreams and secrets, Anamika aims to create a space that reminds us of our shared humanity—our fears, our desires, and our universal longing for a better future.
If you’d like to Participate in building content for this installation before it goes live, you can contribute by creating an audio file! How to Participate:
Anamika describes the process eloquently in her google form she has created for accepting the audio files. Please click this link: https://form.jotform.com/251376788858277
This event is free and does not require advance registration. The experience is for one person at a time, and lasts roughly 5 minutes.
- Dyeing & Dying Exhibit
Saturday, July 5, 202512:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 13, 20257:00 p.m.
Ocean Artworks Pavillion
1531 Johnston Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3S6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/dyeing-and-dying
https://www.showpass.com/dyeing-and-dying-exhibit/
Let’s begin at the end.
Dyeing & Dying marks the culmination of Varsha Gill and Shahir Krishna’s 2025 Artist as Healer residency with Indian Summer Festival. This installation emerges from a series of contemplative community workshops about death and dying held in Spring 2025. The workshops welcomed participants into a slow unraveling of their myriad relationships to death, grief, and the things that remain unsaid.
Rooted in somatic facilitation, ritual, and natural textile arts, the Dyeing & Dying installation opens a portal to consider death not only as an end, but also a beginning and an offering—all while being immersed in a spatial sound installation by percussionists Jen Yamakovich and Adrian Avendano.
Together, the Dyeing & Dying workshops and installation explore how contemplative community art and ceremony can weave meaningful connections amidst the isolating forces of our times, helping lighten the weight of the grief we carry. Join us as we traverse a textured landscape of mourning and memory, instilling a sense of wonder toward the question: How might contemplating dying help us tend more fully to living?
The Exhibition is free and does not require advance registration
Dates: Monday, July 7th – Sunday, July 13th
Weekdays: 12:00 – 6:00 p.m
Weekends: 1:00 – 7:00 p.m
We invite you to interact with textile creations, read and write reflections on grief and healing, and encounter a death shroud performance by shibari artist Soya Sabi at the opening reception on Saturday, July 5th from 2-4 p.m
- Today is the evening to strike lightning / Aaj To Bijiliyan Girane Ki Shaam Hai
Saturday, July 5, 2025
7:30 p.m. 9:00 p.m.
Annex
823 Seymour Street Vancouver, BC, V6B 3L4 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/lightning
“Whatever the dynamic duo of Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar conceive as their first choreographic collaboration will surely be stunning, inventive, challenging and provocative.” — Am Johal, ISF 2025 Curator in Residence
Indian Summer Festival is thrilled to present an original, newly commissioned dance work.
Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar’s first choreographic collaboration is an act of devotion that collapses Waacking, choreographic scores, and gestures sourced from memories and images of their mothers dancing. Today is the evening to strike lightning is a poetic consideration of dances past in order to surface what has been submerged over time.
Echoes of joy, resistance, and care are embodied in a tender act of reclamation, a quiet riot against forgetting. Folding the past into the present to make way for something newly possible, here, every step is an offering toward what endures.
Drawing on an invitation from ISF 2025 curator-in-residence Am Johal, Justine A. Chambers and Simran Sachar, in their first choreographic collaboration promise to deliver something distinctive, personal and political to ISF audiences.
This will be a special, intimate evening not to be missed.
- Tiffin Talk: We Carry Her Name – A Gathering of Roots, Restoration, and Rising
Sunday, July 6, 2025
12:00 p.m. 2:00 p.m.
Ocean Artworks Pavillion
1531 Johnston Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3S6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/tiffin-talk-we-carry-her-name
https://www.showpass.com/tiffin-talk-we-carry-her-name/
Presented as part of Indian Summer Festival’s Tiffin Talks series
In the quiet echoes of our hearts and the rhythm of our steps, we carry her—our grandmothers, aunties, mothers, and unnamed matriarchs whose wisdom lives within our breath.
This gathering is a reflection and offering: a space woven by and for Indigenous, Black, South Asian, and gender-expansive people to honor the ancestral lineages that birthed us, carried us, and continue to walk with us.
Facilitated by moderator Suvi Bains, Associate Curator at Surrey Art Gallery and an advocate for cultural inclusivity and representation, the conversation will weave together intergenerational memory, creative expression, and community healing.
Joining her are two incredible artists:
Justine Redila is a multidisciplinary artist and facilitator whose work—deeply inspired by her Filipina grandmothers, one of the first 10 nurses from the Philippines to work in Vancouver—centers creative expression, environmental stewardship, and community connection through inclusive, cross-cultural spaces rooted in art, storytelling, and intergenerational connection
Linsay Willier Kendall, Nehiyo (Cree) and Hungarian from Sucker Creek First Nation, is a trained actor, athlete, and proud mother who transformed her national platform as a finalist on Canada’s Next Top Model into a decade-long career empowering Indigenous youth through self-esteem workshops, community visits, and culturally grounded mentorship.
Together, they invite us to reflect on what has been passed down—through stories, songs, rituals, resilience—and what it means to care for those who came before us by nurturing ourselves and one another.
In this moment of global unrest, disconnection, and resurgence, we gather to understand how to keep generational knowledge alive—how to hold oral histories close and ensure they live on through us. We ask: What empowers us now? How do we rise, rooted? How can we hold space for grief and joy, survival and celebration, memory and imagination?
In a world that too often forgets or fractures us—we choose remembrance and restoration.
After the talk, we will share a warm, nourishing meal served in Indian-style tiffins. Gathered inside the outdoor, covered, Ocean Artworks Pavilion, we reflect, connect, and carry forward the wisdom we’ve inherited.
- Tiffin Talk: IYKYK
Sunday, July 6, 2025
3:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m.
Ocean Artworks Pavillion
1531 Johnston Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3S6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/iykyk
https://www.showpass.com/tiffin-talk-iykyk/
Presented as part of Indian Summer Festival’s Tiffin Talks series
What if your first encounter with a work of art is not by looking but listening?
Writer, curator and art historian, Sadia Shirazi leads IYKYK, an intimate Tiffin Talk that begins with a series of readings—inviting us to reimagine how we experience art beyond the gallery wall. The readings will scaffold our discussion of artwork, wall labels, materiality, provenance, language, access, opacity, land, steadfastness, and the intersections of postcolonial and Indigenous cosmologies.
Following the dialogue, enjoy a warm, nourishing Indian lunch served in traditional Indian-style tiffins. Gathered inside the outdoor, covered, Ocean Artworks Pavilion, this event invites you to slow down, share a meal, and rethink how we pay attention.
This event will be Live Captioned, and will include ASL interpretation.
- Tiffin Talk: Artist as Healer
Sunday, July 6, 2025
6:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m.
Ocean Artworks Pavillion
1531 Johnston Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3S6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/artist-as-healer
https://www.showpass.com/tiffin-talk-artist-as-healer/
Presented as part of Indian Summer Festival’s Tiffin Talks series
How can art hold grief? How can ritual create space for healing, and death deepen our connection to life?
As part of Indian Summer’s 2025 Artist As Healer residency, Varsha Gill and Shahir Krishna led a series of community workshops rooted in slowness, somatic care and ceremony. Blending natural dyeing, mindful movement, slow-textile arts, and ritual, they explored how creative practice can support inner transformation, particularly in relationship to grief, mortality, and dying.
This Tiffin Talk brings their inquiry to the table:
What happens when we sit with death not as an end, but as a mirror?
How might facing impermanence sharpen our sense of meaning, purpose, and love?
Joined by project director Pawan Deol as the moderator and residency mentor Farheen Haq, Varsha and Shahir will share their collective learnings and reflect on the meditative and communal power of art-making, and how re-envisioning death can transform our communities from within.
Following the conversation enjoy a warm meal served in Indian-style tiffins around a long table at Ocean Artworks Pavilion surrounded by ocean, cedar, and sky.
Come to listen, reflect, and be nourished—literally and metaphorically.
- A Raucous Evening with Kiran Deol
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
7:00 p.m. 9:00 p.m.
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton Street Vancouver, BC, V6B 5N6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/kiran-deol
https://www.showpass.com/a-raucous-evening-with-kiran-deol-2/
“Joy is an act of rebellion. So come laugh with me.” — Kiran Deol
Kiran Deol (she/her) is a fearless and sharply funny voice redefining what it means to be a South Asian woman in comedy. A Harvard-educated comedian, actor, writer, and filmmaker, Kiran brings a rare blend of intellect and irreverence to the stage—delivering blistering commentary on politics, identity, and the absurdities of modern life.
In times when speech is policed and critique punished, laughter is a radical technology. Kiran Deol takes the mic not just to entertain, but to unravel. Whether she’s torching taboos or slipping disarming truths into gut-busting punchlines, her stand-up is a potent alchemy of hilarity and fire. From starring in NBC’s Sunnyside, Deol has long danced at the edge of personal and political. Now, she brings that high-voltage charisma to our stage, daring us to crack up and wake up.
Kiran’s live shows have garnered critical acclaim across the U.S., including headlining the NY Comedy Festival, the Kennedy Center, Hollywood Improv and Lincoln Center. She’s performed alongside icons like Hasan Minhaj and brings the same electric presence that earned her an Emmy nomination and Oscar Shortlist for her documentary work to every performance.
We invite you into an uproarious night of comedy where laughter becomes resistance and every punchline packs a punch. Expect an evening of truth-telling, boundary-pushing, and the kind of shared catharsis only great comedy can offer.
Don’t miss this rare performance from one of the most exciting comedic talents of our time.
Meanwhile, catch her comedy special JOYSUCK streaming on Vimeo worldwide.
- Artist Roundtable
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
12:00 p.m. 3:00 p.m.
221A
700-825 Pacific Street Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1C3 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/artist-roundtable
https://www.showpass.com/artists-roundtable/
How to Make Work in a World on Fire? Strategies for Survival in Troubling Times.
The world is loosening at the seams. Old certainties—shibboleths once whispered as truth—crack and collapse. Ghosts we thought buried return with new names and older wounds.
In this haunted hour, what does it take to create? How do artists and writers intervene when the ground gives way beneath us? How might we think otherwise—feel otherwise—amid the ruins?
We live inside systems that extract, exhaust, and erase. And yet, even here—especially here—artists persist beyond reason. To gather. To listen. To risk.
What does it mean to be an artist in this present hour? When the air is thick with crisis. When the future feels uncertain or foreclosed. How do we keep creating?
Moderated by Khelsilem, Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal, and Khari Wendell McClelland, this annual Artist Roundtable invites racialized artists and cultural organizers to reflect on what it means to make work in troubled times. It brings together those who aren’t just reacting to a crisis, but working through it.
Testing new forms. Practicing refusal. Risking new solidarities. Opening small cracks in the inertia of the world as it is. Join us for a conversation that is part gathering, part witness, part rallying cry. Come as you are.
This event is open to all self-identified racialized artists and cultural organizers.
- Radical Possibility in the Age of Impunity
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
7:00 p.m. 9:00 p.m.
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright Street Vancouver, BC, V6H 3R7 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/radical-possibility-in-the-age-of-impunity
https://www.showpass.com/radical-possibility-in-the-age-of-impunity/
In an era of sudden closures— where violence is normalized and the masquerade of accountability is ever more cynically deployed— how do we think, live, and dream otherwise in an entangled, planetary world getting more hard-edged by the day?
This urgent conversation moderated by ISF Curator-in-Residence Am Johal, brings together globally renowned thinkers Glen Coulthard, Brenna Bhandar, and Alberto Toscano to explore the contours and potency of radical philosophy and theory— and what they can bring to the contemporary political and conceptual battlefield.
This panel is an invitation to think collectively, sharpen our tools for resilience and resistance, and reimagine what solidarity looks like in a time of global crisis.
If you’re searching for language for what feels unspeakable and frameworks for action beyond the status quo, this is the conversation you can’t afford to miss.
- Indian Summer Sounds
Thursday, July 10, 2025
5:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m.
šxʷƛ̓exən Xwtl’a7shn
650 Hamilton Street Vancouver, BC V6B 5N6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/indian-summer-sounds
Indian Summer Sounds is part of the free Summer Sounds series presented with Vancouver Civic Theatres.
As the sun sets over Coast Salish skies, join us for an evening of genre-defying live music featuring some of the West Coast’s most inventive artists.
The night begins with the expressive strings and vocals of Sejal Lal, moves into the soulful sounds of Jody Okabe, and flows into the hip-hop-infused elemental soundscapes of Ruby Singh’s kraKIN. The evening crescendos with the bold brass of Surya Brass Band, who will lead a procession through the plaza to Horizons, our ticketed event inside the Playhouse.
This is music for everyone—rooted, boundary-pushing, and full of possibility.
- Horizons
Thursday, July 10, 2025
7:30 p.m. 10:30 p.m.
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton St Vancouver, BC V6B 5N6 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/horizons
https://www.showpass.com/horizons/
How do we hold grief in these fractured times? When nation states starve the innocent and empires redraw borders with ruthless intent, when tools meant to connect us end up driving us apart, we turn to artists to offer meaning and remind us of our humanity. Horizons gathers a luminous constellation of award-winning artists who offer us vision, sanctuary, and solidarity.
Curated by Ruby Singh, this event features Vivek Shraya, whose award-winning body of work spans music, literature, visual art, theatre, TV, film, and fashion. Also featuring Kimmortal renowned for their highly conceptual, genre-bending musical explorations and intricate lyricism. Mohanad El Eek, a virtuoso Syrian oud player, adds his exceptional talent to the lineup.
The night will also showcase exclusive one-night-only collaborations: the heart-stirring poetry of Brandon Wint paired with the dynamic composer, trumpeter, bassist, and electronic musician Feven Kidane; and Governor General’s Literary Award winner
Cecily Nicholson in collaboration with the soulful sounds of violinist, singer, and songwriter Sejal Lal.
Together, these artists create a powerful soundscape—part concert, part gathering, part invocation of a future built on connection, care, resistance and difference. This is more than a performance—it’s an invitation to critically imagine new ways of being together in the troubling present.
Just as horizons stretch beyond lines on a map, this night of performance transcends the confines of genre. Through music, poetry, and stories, these artists light a torch in the dark, guiding us toward collective reckoning and shared humanity.
This is more than a performance. It is a gathering — a reminder that even in grief, we can meet at the horizon and imagine something new, together.
- Lecture/Demonstration
Friday, July 11, 2025
7:30 p.m. 9:00 p.m.
Studio Theatre at Surrey Arts Centre
13750 88 Avenue Surrey, BC, V3W 3L1 Canada
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/lec-dem
https://tickets.surrey.ca/TheatreManager/1/tmEvent/tmEvent2794.html
In Conversation with Alam Khan and Eman Hashimi
Meet the artists! Join Alam Khan for an intimate and illuminating lecture-demonstration that explores the world of Indian classical music through the voice of the sarod. Accompanied by tabla player Eman Hashimi, the duo will discuss and demonstrate the rhythmic intricacies that define this rich musical tradition.
In this session, Alam will share insights into the deep-rooted tradition of the Senia Maihar Gharana, discuss the nuances of the sarod—its tonal depth, intricate technique, and expressive capacity—and trace his personal journey within this musical heritage. With live performance and guided listening, he will demonstrate how Indian Classical Music functions as a form of sonic meditation—capable of evoking profound emotional and spiritual resonance.
Whether you arrive with curiosity or familiarity, this is an invitation to engage with a living tradition, understand its philosophical underpinnings, and witness the transmission of timeless knowledge through sound.
Attend both the Concert (July 12) and Lecture/Demonstration (July 11) and save $10. Call the Box Office at 604.501.5580 to book.
- Rishta
Sunday, July 13, 2025
3:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m.
Punjabi Market Plaza at Main & 50th
https://indiansummerfest.ca/events/rishta
A love story of poetry and music in Punjabi culture through the generations.
Step into a living archive of Punjabi expression at Rishta, a vibrant afternoon where poetry, music, memory, and community converge. This gathering honours the enduring love story between verse and music in Punjabi culture and is free to attend.
From the timeless words of Baba Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Amrita Pritam and so many others; to fresh works by emerging and professional poets, this event celebrates the legacy and future of Punjabi literary and musical traditions. Voices from across generations, including Sadhu Binning, Satwinder Bains, Hari Alluri, Phinder Dulai, Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal, Jvala Singh, Anjalica Soloman, Roshni Riar, and Guntaj Deep Singh — will share the stage with cherished elders from the community.
Each reading is paired with live music performed by virtuosos Rishi Ranjan (rabab/sarod), Amarjeet Singh (tabla), and Baljit Singh (dilruba), blending classical and contemporary textures into a sonic tribute to language and love.
Come for the poetry, stay for the cha, snacks, games, and the warmth of the Punjabi Market community’s hospitality. Be part of the story. Bring your elders, your kids, your friends.
