SAVAC Announces New Executive Director Vanessa Godden and Farewell to Indu Vashist

Vanessa Godden

SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is pleased to announce its new Executive Director, Vanessa Godden, with a message from exiting ED, Indu Vashist:

It is with great joy that I pass the baton of Executive Directorship of SAVAC to Vanessa Godden. Vanessa is an Indo-Caribbean/Euro-Canadian artist, curator, and contributor to many Toronto and international artist-run initiatives—from lead programmer and administrator at The Toronto Performance Art Collective (7a*11d), the past co-chair on the Board of Directors of the Images Festival, to being an Independent Curator at Diasporic Futurisms. In addition to grassroots initiatives, they also work in art educational institutions, currently as a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto Scarborough. They have injected positive energy, creativity, and incisive, critical analysis into all of their endeavours.

Vanessa has a keen interest and investment in SAVAC’s history, mandate, and ethos. They will build upon the 30+ year archive of diasporic art and advocacy for racialized artists while honouring SAVAC’s political and artistic origins rooted in the spirit of the 90s queer, activist, South Asian scene in Toronto. This is evidenced by Vanessa’s artistic practice—based in installation, text, and participatory gestures—which often examines how systems of power shape memory, belonging, and access. Vanessa’s personal experience within the South Asian community through Trinidadian diasporic contexts, being a diaspora of a diaspora, provides them with a unique perspective towards understanding the ways migration shapes culture and community. This creative foundation gives them a uniquely grounded perspective as a leader: They understand firsthand what artists need to take risks, sustain their practices, and navigate often-hostile infrastructures.

Vanessa steps into this role with an open mind and a clear vision: to ensure that SAVAC remains fiercely experimental and radically inclusive. I have already seen how their thoughtful, collaborative approach is inspiring those around them.

Please join me in warmly welcoming Vanessa Godden as SAVAC’s new Executive Director.

– Indu Vashist

Learn more about Vanessa Godden on SAVAC’s team page.

Indu Vashist

A farewell message to Indu Vashist from SAVAC’s Board of Directors:

After thirteen extraordinary years as SAVAC’s Executive Director, Indu Vashist is stepping into an exciting new path, and we want to honor this incredible milestone!

Indu’s visionary leadership has been transformative at SAVAC and across the arts sector in Canada. She serves as a living archive of SAVAC’s commitment to promoting and mentoring racialized artists, and of the multiplicity of identities and experiences that are root, tree, and branch of South Asian arts. Under Indu’s direction, SAVAC has reimagined what an artist-run centre can be and do.

As a founding member, Indu helped dream The Commons @ 401 into being, a shared-space initiative that reimagined how five arts organizations could grow together. As SAVAC’s longest-serving staff member, she provided continuity and vision with multiple Artistic Directors, and helped shape over a decade of programming.

Beyond SAVAC, Indu has contributed to arts organizations across India and Canada. She has served on the boards of Media Arts Network of Ontario and the Blackwood Gallery, and on advisory committees for the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Me Too and the Arts” and the Creative Time Summit.

Her role as a founding member of the Basic Income Commission demonstrated how a basic income program would transform the livelihood and practice of artists and the arts sector. Her advocacy shone bright in bringing communities together to stand in solidarity with oppressed peoples and nations, from Palestine to Kashmir.

We are tremendously grateful to Indu for her commitment to this organization, to racialized artists, and to radical arts practices that sustain and move the sector forward.

While we’ll miss her tremendously, we’re thrilled to see Indu deepen her somatic movement practice. She’s brought body and land-based practices into the arts sector, and will bring that same care and knowledge to her work as a somatic movement practitioner. Visit Indu’s website to see what’s next.

– SAVAC Board of Directors

SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is a not-for-profit, artist-run centre in Canada dedicated to cultivating and presenting the practices of artists of colour. We support work that (in)directly addresses the ways histories of people of colour are represented alongside the story of ongoing colonialism on Turtle Island and post-colonial histories of the Global South. These works are challenging, experimental and offer multifarious perspectives on the contemporary world.

SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre)
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 450
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8, Canada
www.savac.net
info@savac.net
+1 416 542 1661

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