Sept 28

Arjun Lal

Arjun Lal is an interdisciplinary artist based in K’jipuktuk. Through sculptural and performance based work they fuel discussions on themes including colonialism/post-colonialism and queer futurity through fantasy world building. Their past worlds include a forest of fruity people, a leather bar in Bangalore, investigative vibratory soundscapes and portals into space/time.

Lal is currently an MFA candidate at NSCAD University where they are dreaming about what a post-colonial world might feel like. Their work is driven by lived-experiences and collected sensations which manifest into sensory responses through his art practice.

Shrimp Ring

Spotlight Project

I have found myself gorging on brine shrimp day after day, accumulating its natural dye in my body. I can see the shrimps hues bleeding into my skin and feathers as though I am attaining their seductive characteristics. It will be mating season soon and I hope to be in my best form.

Shrimp Ring is an inflatable sculpture and landscape component for a fantasy world where we can live as flamingos.

Lumiere Arts Festival 2024 // The Art of Caring

Lumiere Arts Festival invites artists and community members to reflect on the concept of care.

In a polarized landscape, care can lap like a brook, or pound like large waves crashing ashore. To care is to tend, to root, to rebel, to share and to endure. This year, the festival is encouraging artists to submit works rooted in solidarity, with community building as resistance, that explores the need to care for ourselves, others, and the earth, both locally and globally. The Lumiere Arts Festival makes space for joy, contemporary art, and meaningful dialogue.

Land Acknowledgement

Lumière Arts Festival, on behalf of the board, the artists, and the communities we represent, acknowledges that we work, live and play in the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people, in Unama’ki Cape Breton, who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.

We are grateful not only for the strong and ongoing stewardship of these lands we call home, but also for the stories, music, and art that Mi’kmaq people continue to create and share, carrying ancestral voices, sacred teachings, and legacies of interconnectedness and resilience forward into the present and on to the future.

We aspire to reflect that sense of connection between past and present in our festival. We are inspired by L’nu artists to foster connection and self-reflection in our work. We will work to ensure that art is accessible, inclusive, and integrated into public spaces so that we can share our collective stories, recognizing the challenges of our past and imagining brighter futures.

We are all Treaty people.