Shalaka Jadhav
Sandhills Lawn Games Club | Kitchener, Ontario
Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka took the advice of an aptitude test and currently practices as an independent writer and curator based on Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract (Kitchener, ON). Their research spans spatial positionality, grief geographies, and public memory, as evidenced in exhibitions curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, Kitchener, Guelph, and Toronto. Shalaka co-directs Textile, a hyper-local arts collective in Waterloo Region. As a 2025 Musagetes Fellow, they are developing place-based curatorial and publication projects. Shalaka is a Visiting Curator at the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery and Writer-in-Residence for CAFKA.25: Field Guide to the Understory.
About the Project
Sandhills Lawn Games Club expands the cultural definition of “lawn games” to include "street games" from the Global South. Staged as play and cultural dialogue, the project highlights how games signal cooperation, tension, and shared values. “Members” of the fictional club will gather to play adapted games, and receive native pollinator seeds, bringing attention to the ways that our public parks are heterogenized by lawn-grasses. In prompting reflection on land use and recreational space, we reimagine lawns and parks not as passive backdrops but as dynamic commons where community values are negotiated, contested, and reshaped through joyful play.