Outgoing EAC boss Sanjay Shahani brought us closer to our arts

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A whirl of artists, arts professionals and well-wishers gathered at Art Gallery of Alberta under Dwayne Martineau’s giant mural last Monday — everyone from Juno-winning singer-songwriter Maria Dunn to local modern dance kingpin Brian Webb to hardworking NDP MLA David Shepherd.

Edmonton Folk Music Festival’s Terry Wickham mingled with Métis artist and educator MJ Belcourt Moses and Bottom Line Productions’ legendary buzz queen Darka Tarnawsky, while Mayor Amarjeet Sohi popped in for a photo as a cornucopic yet cohesive arts community came out to cheerfully congratulate outgoing Edmonton Arts Council executive director Sanjay Shahani for his tenure in perhaps the city’s top arts position.

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“There’s a deep-seated, deep-rooted sense of pathos,” Shahani says of his departure from Edmonton this week. “I feel a sense of loss.

“There’s so many relationships, and the ease with which those relationships happened. In my first two weeks here going for a show at Varscona Theatre, two couples stopped me and said, ‘Welcome to our city.’ Same thing on 124 Street, walking to Duchess.

“Where are you doing to get that in a place of a million people?

“There’s that hunger for connection,” says the 59-year-old. “And I’m going to miss that.”

When the Bombay-born artist, filmmaker, advocate and high-profile administrator first showed up in Edmonton from Toronto to run the non-profit EAC eight years ago, I joked with him he was overqualified.

But his curiosity about the city was palpable as he promised to explore our geography which, no surprise here, he came to know and love.

Last month, EAC’s board announced Shahani was moving on to become Director General, Strategy and Public Affairs, at the Canada Council for the Arts.

The prestigious job in Ottawa is a wide-ranging set of responsibilities including strategic planning, international coordination and cultural diplomacy — all tied into CC’s mandate to promote the study and enjoyment of art, as well as foster creativity, on and beyond a national scale.

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EAC’s interim director is now Shirley Combdon, who’s been with the council for 18 years — the board announcing the next steps to find Shahani’s replacement soon.

Shahani, meanwhile, notes he’s identifying as an Edmontonian as he quickly moves into his new duties, promising to advocate for the city as he has over the last near-decade with his goal of both bringing outside art here while introducing our creativity to the world.

This sort of engagement is central to the EAC’s cultural roadmap under Shahani, who oversaw the impressive and award-winning Connections & Exchanges: A 10-Year Plan to Transform Arts and Heritage in Edmonton (2019-2029) which you can and should read at edmontonarts.ca.

“It became very clear that the one thing that exemplifies Edmonton in spades is that we’re constantly on this journey,” observes Shahani. “We’re not the kind of community or people who take a great deal of pride in having something that is finished and then we celebrate — we’re constantly building new things.

“And I think, whatever we do in the city, we do it with a lens of participation. And I firmly believe the more diverse experiences you create, the more open doors there are to come in and participate,” he notes, crucial in our shifting demographic reality.

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“And once you’re able to do those things, then the idea of citizenship and engagement becomes really important.”

This multifaceted, direct engagement, which defined Shahani’s EAC years, was especially important during the pandemic, when the council and its team leaned in to help not just shuttered, audience-exiled artists with around $640,000 of emergency funding, but also helped facilitate a wave of distanced events to a general populace suffering the pains of isolation.

“Suddenly we had no connection to each other,” Shahani says of the biggest challenge during his tenure, one with lingering side effects in the arts. “Even though we had these digital devices, the authenticity of the encounter was gone.

“So now that we think we’re out of it, it’s how do we not bring back what was there before, but bring back that sense of being open to experiencing wonder, that everything is not a two-dimensional image, that there is depth in your life?

“That you’re not programmed through Netflix and the algorithms, but you have your own sensibility,” he says.

“I think people are coming back to that slowly — but many of our arts organizations are facing difficulty because the audience’s habits have changed.”

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Beyond facing down the pandemic on a bedrock of effective policy in place, Shanahi has much to be proud of — including being recognized with a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal last year.

His fond memories here are many, like participating in the joyful Round Dance at the reveal of Alex Janvier’s stunning Tsa Tsa Ke K’e mosaic piece in the downtown arena, soon after he first arrived.

Besides the 500 works at Tawatinâ Bridge, among Shahani’s favourite public art pieces are Max Streicher’s Helios hovering horses in the Churchill Connector LRT station, Pierre Poussin’s energetic Esprit in Alex Decoteau Park, and Thorsten Goldberg’s mountainous 53°30’N on Edmonton’s North East Transit Garage.

“You have this massive piece in this industrial area that’s connecting Edmonton in a way that it was connected before we even existed,” he smiles of its sculpted mountain topographies from around the world.

Less specifically, EAC’s outgoing executive director reminds us our particular arts council is actually a rare, beautiful thing: created by artists, independently run at arm’s length from city council, constantly archiving our creative history.

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“We commission public art, we conserve the art, we do community animation through our programming in Churchill Square and the neighbourhoods, we have a shop to sell the work of artists and sell tickets,” he says.

“But fundamentally I think the commitment to all these things is less about the administration and more about the trust and relationship we hold on behalf of others.”

Shahani gets to the root value of art itself.

“We support making meaning, and we do all that through artists. Without artists, all this function, all the beautiful roads we end up getting, doesn’t define your city in any way. It doesn’t happen with a logo, it doesn’t happen with a slogan,” he says.

“But it happens every day, through art.”

One last thing Shahani says he’ll miss here: the culinary arts.

“The food scene in Edmonton is pretty special. How many people know about that in the county? Not very many,” he says.

“There’s a South Indian restaurant on Stony Plain Road, Aachy’s, which in Tami land Telugu means grandmother.”

“Bistro Praha, Izakaya Tomo, Khazana — which I think is the best Panjabi food in the country!”

Having fallen in love with the city, he and his wife plan to return on an annual pilgrimage.

“She said, ‘We should go every year to Edmonton in the summer for two days and two in Jasper.’

“So,” says Shahani, “I will be back.”

fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

@fisheyefoto

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