Different strokes

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This article was published 06/01/2018 (3116 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With paper, pencils and paintbrushes, two Winnipeg artists have quietly helped thousands of local students express their experiences of diversity.

For the past decade, Ray Dirks, curator of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery, has collaborated with Manju Lodha, a member of the city’s Hindu and Jain communities, in leading art workshops on multiculturalism and multifaith.

“They have an incredible capacity to bring something that is artistically sound, socially rooted and religiously complete to bring diverse communities together,” says Cheryl Pauls, president of Canadian Mennonite University, home to Dirks’ gallery.

“They’re so bold and effective and yet they’re understated and grassroots.”

Dirks and Lodha will receive the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding at a ceremony at Government House on Jan. 10.

Previous recipients include former Winnipeg police chief Devon Clunis, counsellor and columnist Karen Toole, Rabbi Neal Rose and his wife Carol Rose, Dr. Redwan Moqbel of the Baha’i community, Hindu priest Atish Chandra Maniar, Aboriginal elder Mae Louise Campbell, former University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy and composer Zane Zalis.

Dirks and Lodha’s collaboration began in 2006, when Lodha, now 71, gathered up her courage to ask Dirks about displaying her folk-art paintings featuring religious imagery at his gallery.

She wasn’t familiar with Christian institutions or knowledgeable about Mennonites, but that first exhibit led to a unique partnership between artists of different faiths and cultures.

“Faiths can co-exist only when we know about each other,” says the Indian-born Lodha, who moved to Canada in 1971 with her geoscientist husband, Ganpat.

Initially, Lodha and Dirks teamed up with artist Isam Aboud, a Muslim man originally from Sudan, to present art workshops on multicultural and multifaith themes to schoolchildren of all ages.

The trio made an impact just by walking into a room and sharing their art and their life stories, retired school administrator Joan Douglas says.

“They were living examples of people of different creeds and gender and faiths working together and doing good work,” says Douglas, who nominated Lodha and Dirks for the award.

She says the workshops encouraged children to find their unique gifts and express their reality through collages, paintings and drawings.

“It also achieved another purpose, to have that rich diversity and admiration and respect and appreciation for each other,” says Douglas, who first met the artists while she was vice-principal at Gordon Bell High School.

The duo’s workshops are unique in using art to explore issues of diversity and faith, says Tony Tavares, diversity and international education consultant with Manitoba’s Department of Education and Training.

“When there’s a collaboration of experience and you share your views, you learn from that,” says Tavares, who served with Lodha on the Manitoba Association for Multicultural Education board.

“It’s part of the message they bring — to share your voice and take risks.”

Their workshops were followed by two exhibits of art they collected from students, including adult English learners, as well as two books about the projects, and a video entitled Leap in Faith.

“It was an opportunity for kids to express themselves in a way they are sometimes embarrassed to express themselves, about your culture and tradition, and that’s what we were encouraging them to do,” said Dirks, 62.

Both Dirks and Lodha are established artists locally and further afield. Dirks has worked or exhibited in 30 countries, including many in Africa, and recently completed a series of paintings honouring Russian Mennonite mothers and grandmothers in an exhibition at The King’s University in Edmonton. Last November, he launched the accompanying book, Along the Road to Freedom: Mennonite Women of Courage and Faith.

Active at the Hindu temple on St. Anne’s Road, Lodha is a member of the board of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the education committee of the Manitoba Multifaith Council. Tavares says she excels at making connections across the faith spectrum, and can gently persuade others to join her in creative projects.

“She’s always thinking up ideas and not afraid to reach out to people and seek collaboration,” Tavares says.

That curiosity and ability to connect has resulted in the 10-year partnership with Dirks, presenting both with opportunities they wouldn’t have had individually.

“Manju has been toiling away at these issues for decades, and then we met each other and it expanded both our worlds,” says Dirks, father of singer Alexa Dirks.

“We opened doors for each other.”

brenda@suderman.com

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