Par Nair: Exploring Heritage Through Art at RMG Gallery

A vibrant painting depicting lush green trees and tropical plants in a courtyard setting, featuring buildings with colorful walls and a blue roof. — Par Nair, *the view from her bedroom window*, 2025, oil on canvas.

Par Nair: the place from my grandma’s dreams

Solo Exhibition Oct. 4 – Nov. 30, 2025 – Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

Par Nair experimented with new styles and techniques during her residency at RMG to create a series of textile works and landscape paintings inspired by her family’s home in Kerela, India.

An embroidered artwork depicting a woman in traditional attire preparing food at a table, surrounded by bowls of ingredients, showcasing intricate stitching and vibrant colors. — From an online profile on Par Nair’s time as artist-in-residence at RMG here

Alongside the paintings, Nair also presents embroidery projects that are meditative and poetic, drawing on themes of migration, inheritance, and family history.

A painted portrait of two women in traditional Indian saris, one adorned with a yellow border and the other in red accents, standing closely together with their arms intertwined, set against a light blue background. — *Her songs were soft 7*, Oil painting on canvas 30” x 40” 2024 (source)

Par Nair (she/her) is an Indian born artist and educator who lives and makes in the GTA. Par’s art practice pays tribute to ancestral and cultural roots, while intimately and speculatively reimagining diasporic futures through oil paintings, hand embroidery, installation, and creative writing. Par earned her Master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts from OCAD University and has shown her works nationally and internationally. Notable showings include Art Museum at University of Toronto, Craft Ontario, The Textile Museum of Canada, Nuit Blanche, The maritime Museum for the Atlantic, Rajiv Menon Contemporary (LA) and The Kochi Biennale (India). Par currently holds the position of Sessional Faculty at OCAD University, where she teaches painting and art theory.

A profile on Par Nair’s artist-in-residency at RMG, here.