![A composite image comprised of Arjun Lal wearing an inflated latex cow costume in front of a green grass field filled with sheep. In the far distance is a bright blue sky with white clouds over a mountain filled with lush foliage and a white, blue, and red apartment building at left. Arjun’s upper body is in frame and they have a neutral face expression as they stick their tongue out. Arjun’s face is partially discernable at the centre of a large headpiece with two large eye holes and a semi-sheer clear latex used that alludes to the lower half of their face. They have dark hair and brown skin. The costume is primarily made of white latex with two long black, gold capped horns at top and an ear at either side of the head. The white latex body piece is like a tank top with a high scoop neckline, Arjun’s shoulders are exposed. Bold white sans-serif text outlined in black reads, “Shrines and Rituals, Arjun Lal, June 18 to August 1, 2026. grunt gallery’s logo appears in white at bottom right.]](https://grunt.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Slide01_Instagram-1-819x1024.jpg)
By intersecting themes of contemporary queer pop culture, Indian iconographies, and Arjun Lal’s own lived experiences and future fantasies, Shrines and Rituals is a speculation on post-colonial world-building through the medium of textiles, sculpture, performance and photography. From the perspective of a second-generation member of Indian Diaspora, Lal reimagines ways of existing through characters, dress and environments. In referencing symbolism and deities from Indian iconographies, such as Kali, the goddess of death and rebirth, Lal opens a portal to dream up what queerness, kink, culture and spirituality can be; sacred, authentic, and new.
Lal reflects on inspirations for Shrines and Rituals:
Role-play is everywhere—in gestures, in touch, in exchanged power, and in the boundaries we maintain. I am fascinated by the roles we inhabit—whether inherited, assigned, assumed, or chosen. These roles reveal the subtle, often unspoken performances that shape desire, intimacy, and social life. Some roles exist as rigid binaries, particularly in intimate relationships: top, bottom, dominant, submissive, active, passive, husband, or wife. Others are embedded in broader society: teacher, student, parent, security guard, tax-collector, or oppressor.
I have invested in the roles of “gay man” and “queer non-binary person”—it’s what I know how to be. Though I wonder what it would be like to be something else and how that might impact my experience of sensation. The more I feel — the more I feel alive.
Throughout my life, I have moved through many roles, alongside others performing theirs, a continuous choreography of expectation, negotiation, and consent. When roles harden—when I am trapped in one, or others cling too tightly to theirs—sensation becomes constricted, reduced to the repetitions of role-specific instructions. While I am alive, I want to feel as much as possible, to inhabit the fullness of experience. I wonder: do repeated sensations disintegrate, intensify, or peak?
I am compelled by the possibility of liberating, reimagining, and fluidly exchanging roles, opening wider pathways to sensation and intimacy. What new desires, pleasures, and intimacies might emerge if vulnerability, curiosity, and consent guide performance rather than hierarchy or tradition?
About the Artist:
Arjun Lal is an interdisciplinary artist based between Kjipuktuk and Berlin. Through playful and otherworldly explorations of identity, experience, and cultural trajectory, Lal uses sculpture and performance to fuel cultural critique, shifts, and possibilities for new ways of being.
In response to their experiences navigating contemporary queer culture as a person from Indian ancestry, Lal’s works are confrontational. Driven by an ongoing desire for a queerer world, his works equip audiences with symbols, colours, shapes, actions, perspective, gestures… fragments of conversations and dreams carefully assembled into social/cultural abstraction. Lal is fascinated by the roles we inhabit—whether inherited, assigned, assumed, or chosen. They explore the choreography of expectation, sensation, and liberation from the unspoken repetitions of role-specific instructions.
Visit Lal’s Instagram page @arjunlal92 here.
About the Curator:
Vance Wright (they/them) is a reconnecting two-spirit member of the Tl’azt’en Nation, and was raised on the unceded territories of the Sinixt, Okanagan and Ktunaxa Nations in what is colonially known as Nelson BC. Currently residing in the occupied and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, they are an emerging artist, curator and writer. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University, with a major in Critical and Cultural Practices and a minor in Curatorial Studies
This project was made possible with support from Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Council for the Arts.
Shrines and Rituals Performance by Arjun Lal.
Saturday, June 20th, 11:30am to 1pm.
“I have been practicing improvisation as a tool for future speculation. Meditating, relaxing, and allowing my mind and body to wander into mysterious spaces where pathways appear and disappear. I find it easy to get lost and I don’t mind this feeling. For when I am surrounded in the darkness of my mind I can start searching again for a pathway towards something I don’t know.” – Arjun Lal
Curious about practicing improvisation as a tool for future speculation? Current exhibiting artist, Arjun Lal invites attendees to a satsang and soundbath to meditate, relax, and let their mind wander into the mysterious spaces where pathways appear and disappear. To Arjun, inhabiting the sometimes quieter, vast empty parts of the mind can allow more flexibility to find a pathway that isn’t regularly apparent, perhaps leading to a realization previously unknown.
The event will be seated, there will be an amp with mid-level noise, and free earplugs will be provided. Please feel free to bring your own cozy comfort items.