Musician
Spoken word poet
Visual artist
Raunaq Connects is a collective that focuses on the professional development of South Asian women artists. The mission of Raunaq Connects is to arm South Asian artists with skills that inevitably lead them to financial stability. The objective of Raunaq Connects is to acknowledge, validate and remove the cultural and religious barriers in the art industry that are specific to South Asian heritage.
“We view our specific struggles through a lens of intersectionality and try to diminish them together. Developing strong professional and personal relationships with other artists that can relate to our experiences is integral to our development. Whether that is professional, personal, or artistic. Our collective is made up of artists that have varying mediums such as visual artists, digital animators, performance artists (rappers, singers, poets etc.) and more. We aim to share resources, knowledge and materials to aid the professional development skills of other South Asian women in our community. Through peer mentorship and collaborative development, we will be able to foster an environment in which other South Asian women can feel safe, comfortable and empowered.
Raunaq Connects is a collective that began in 2020. It was curated at the startup business incubator ICUBE which is located at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus. For the past two years Raunaq Connects has been in development through collaborations with The Mixdown and Inner-Generational. The Mixdown is an underground showcase for hip hop and R&B. Inner-Generational is an artist showcase that focuses on the unique experience of Canadian-Asian heritage and how it shapes our perspective of the world.
The artists that are currently involved include:
FeniFina (rapper)
Achante (Singer/Songwriter)
Saphera Peters (Visual Artist/Content creator)
Sabbie (Visual Artist)
Majnoona (Spoken word poet, Arts organizer)
Mrii (Producer, Singer, Event Curator, Audio Engineer, DJ)
Amana Park (Event Curator, Spoken word poet)
Parvati (Producer, spoken word poet, visual artist)
Stuti (Visual Artist, entrepreneur)
Neha (Visual Artist)
Simra (Animator and Visual Artist)
Raunaq Connected
This photoshoot is a visual expression of community development. We invited women artists from the South Asian community to dress up in a way that visually represents their most authentic, artistic persona. Then we used this photoshoot as a playful way for all the artists to connect with other South Asian artists. The joy you see in these photos is organic and authentic to the joy we felt while connecting with our community. We are the leaders of our communities either presently or in the near future. We seek to rise together while diminishing the barriers we face.