Oscar and the Two Fridas mingles portraits of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) with floral and food motifs rendered in graphite and watercolour on heavy paper. Wilde and Kahlo were strong-willed artistic mavericks who worked defiantly against sexual discrimination. The piece echoes the charged politics of the 1990s artistic community and Sarindar Dhaliwal’s ongoing visual archive of diasporic narrative.

Dhaliwal was born in Punjab, India, and raised in London, England, before moving to Canada at the age of fifteen. Her work in sculpture, installation, video, photography and painting has been exhibited and collected by major national and international institutions. She has a longstanding relationship with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Kingston.