Vancouver-based visual artist and muralist Sandeep Johal talks creative journey, painting and cultural hybridity
Jasmine Garcha (she/her) // Arts and Culture Editor
Photo credit: Rachel Pick, sourced through Sandeep Johal
From concrete brutalism to clear glass towers, Vancouver’s modern architecture often communicates a cold, corporate exterior. While the underground scene is covered in graffiti, what brings colour to the surface?
The bold colours and patterns present in South Asian artistry seem scarce for a city that has served as a hotspot for South Asian immigration since 1903. Low-profile cultural exhibitions are organized for those in the know, but there is a lack of reach among a wider audience.
One of the creatives who spotlights this cultural hybridity is Sandeep Johal, a visual artist and muralist based in British Columbia, with murals brightening the Lower Mainland and B.C.’s interior as well as places as far as Austin, Texas and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Johal was raised in Kelowna, where cultural diversity was scarce at the time, but community was not; she describes a surplus of support in her youth, her mother being the one to buy her art supplies. However, an art career was a foreign concept. “I didn’t know anyone who was making art or doing anything creative, white or brown,” she explains. “When you don’t have that role model, it’s hard to imagine that it’s a path that exists.”
Describing her pursuit of a biology degree, she says, “I just defaulted to sciences.” During her time in this program, as well as her Bachelor’s of Education at the University of British Columbia, Johal’s professors encouraged her to pursue art, insisting that she was in the wrong faculty. This led Johal to conclude, “If I’m on my deathbed and I ask myself the question, ‘Do I regret not trying?’ I think I would be really disappointed.”
Although eventually attending Langara for the Fine Arts Diploma Program, from which she graduated with honours and a Design Studio Award, Johal did not immediately pursue art. “I didn’t know how to make a body of work. I didn’t know how to network. I didn’t know how to market. I didn’t know how to do anything.”
She goes on to say, “It was around the time of the recession of 2008, so people had no money. So, I ended up getting a proper job and I met my husband around that time.” After years of what she describes as a dead-end job, Johal’s husband encouraged her to pursue an art career in 2015.
Her artistic development can be described as the standard Western-born Desi experience. “I fell toward the status quo,” she says, explaining her subconscious rejection of her culture growing up. She describes being reintroduced to the beauty of her culture upon leaving her hometown and meeting other South Asian creatives, which led to a burst of creativity. This was, and has continued to be, a strong influence on her work.
“I always want to make sure that when people look at my work, they know it was made by a South Asian hand,” Johal explains. “I want it to be as bright and bold as possible because I really want people to see the beauty in our culture, too.”
Johal uses colours, textures and patterns accordingly to lighten the load of the meanings she conveys, as her favourite pieces are the ones centring women’s empowerment. She dedicated a temporary mural at the Vancouver Art Gallery to Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, victims of male violence in England. In separate incidents occurring in London, both women were abducted and murdered in 2021. Another piece in 2019 at Façade Fest was dedicated to Jyoti Singh, who was fatally attacked in 2012 by six men on a bus in Delhi, India.
Raise Your Words, Not Your Voice—a mural she painted in the height of the #MeToo movement—depicts a woman raising her hands to symbolize women allowing themselves to take up space both physically and metaphorically. Johal wants these pieces to serve as a reminder of hopefulness in the face of adversity, a concept which is conveyed in South Asia through patterns, bright colour and light. She poses the question, “You have to have some level of hope that things will change, otherwise what’s the point?”
Having been commissioned to paint murals across the city and pieces for gallery exhibitions whilst also creating in several mediums, Johal describes her work as penetrating many art communities in Vancouver. “I like to have my fingers in a lot of different things,” she says. “I think it’s important for me to diversify because it’s not easy making a living as an artist, obviously, we all know that. To survive, you have to widen your scope.”
Johal says she has been lucky to not have faced many barriers in Vancouver’s art scene. She goes on to say, “I don’t know if South Asian artists are getting as much… What’s the word I’m looking for?” Her son chimes in, “Recognition?”
“Recognition! That’s the word,” Johal says. “I would like to see more emphasis on South Asian artists and not just the typical, ‘Can you make a Diwali show?’” She mentions her own South Asian friends in the art scene, saying she’d like “for all of [them] to succeed together and to move up in the community together.”
She goes on to reference Surinder Dhaliwal, a pioneer of Vancouver’s South Asian art scene, asking, “Who are the South Asian artists, trailblazers, in Canada, that came before us and how do we honour them while also mentoring and having relationships with younger South Asian artists?”
When asked what’s next for her career, Johal responded, “I’ll be working towards two solo exhibitions in 2025 and 2026, as well as some other exciting opportunities that I can’t announce yet.”
She’ll be continuing her experimentations with various mediums such as fabricated public art and plans to attend artist residencies.
Until 2026, Johal’s artwork can be found on banners along the Granville Strip in Downtown Vancouver. She also has various murals around South Vancouver. To find more of Johal’s work and related updates, visit her Instagram page @sandeepjohalart and her website www.sandeepjohal.com.