Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sahil Mroke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Sahil with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I think my work ethic comes from a handful of places; of course my work and academic experiences have attributed many skills and allowed me to experience a variety of disciplines, but most of all I think it’s been an understanding of the position and privilege that I have. Where I have grown up, the community that I have existed in, and the environment that my family before me has cultivated are all immense privileges. My early practice involved much bootstrapping, much like any emerging artist, which forced my collaborators and I to be resourceful with what we had. The ability to work, to commute, attend university, develop a creative practice and pursue career opportunities that I truly enjoy are also immense privileges. Having grown aware of them, having seen what my parents have gone through to build everything we have, I’ve come to see the beautiful garden they have created, which I exist and thrive in. As I’ve built up my own career and creative practice, I see myself at a crossroads with the garden; to take it on, wall it up and keep it all to myself, or to compound it, expand it into an orchard, and open the doors for others to share. So far, I’ve tried my best to do the latter such as with my studio space, Motor-Way Studios, and that underscores much of the work that I aim to do going forward.
In the Sikh faith there is a foundational element called “Seva”, or selfless service, and as I worked through my masters research I realized how impactful growing up within a Sikh-Punjabi household was for my practice. I find my Seva to be a form of creative karma, where my service can come in the form of ideation, critique, or co-production (even just holding the lights), but the energy or creative fuel always returns to my own practice in somehow.
I feel I owe it to the artist in myself, whose been built through collaboration, to always ensure that I share the fruits of my creative practice, which has always carried me to places I didn’t know I could originally reach. I feel as through my responsibility with this privilege is to truly turn the garden to an orchard.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
When I was in the Master of Design program at Emily Carr, I realized that the many different people and places that I had experienced the years prior had all influenced my work in some way. Whether I was directing a music video, handling art direction, or producing a gallery, I found myself trying to create an environment around the work which would lead a sense of harmony and flow. That environment naturally lent itself to beautiful ideas coming to the surface. Thus I focused on the practice of collaboration for my thesis research, questioning what collaboration is, and how we might bring about more effective collaborations. I found that there was no one recipe for collaborating better, but if we understand certain ingredients that lead to effective collaborations, we might begin to assess, understand, and navigate our own collaborations with more ease (and peace).
The experience of the masters did just that for me; understanding collaboration revealed to me my own creative process and I discovered influences and formulas that are present in my approach. These discoveries allowed me to not only navigate collaboration more effectively, but to move through my practice with more ease and flow.
After completing my Master’s I have realized how powerful it is to understand your own creativity, and it’s something that I hope to help others achieve through my own work. Whether that be a collaborative exhibition such as my thesis exhibition, The Butterfly Garden, a week long session of co-creation, or my time spent in the classroom, I hope to support the navigation of creative practices and help others get closer to what their own creativity is. I want to be able to share the ability of navigating and learning to nourish our creativity, much like my experience over the past ten years have shown me.
That’s a long winded way for me to say that Motor-Way Studios is where most of my attention is currently. I hope that I’m able to channel these goals of chasing creativity through this space, as it is another way to turn the garden into an orchard. My studio is situated in the back of my Family’s repair shop (Motor-Way Truck & Trailer) and it is in this space that we’ve been able to curate and produce work for artists, musicians, non-profit organizations and publishers. The Motor-Way Studio is built with the goal of democratizing creative production space and tools, south of the Fraser river, servicing communities in the lower mainland such as Delta, Surrey, White Rock and Langley. We aim to build the space up to a point where we can host boiler-room style events, curate and exhibit multi-disciplinary works, and provide a variety of production, direction or consultation services. We aim to do this by connecting with the communities that I have had the privilege to work with, and by approaching any of the work we do from the lens of my research; to ensure that each and every time a collaboration occurs, it happens with flow, with enjoyment, with play, and with a sense of discovery that expands each collaborators practice.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The first is the ability to take, ask for, and provide feedback. Early on in my practice I realized how harsh a critique can feel; to put your energy into a work and come out thinking and feeling like it is gold, only for something to chip away at it and shatter your experience. Critique is as powerful as you allow it to be. I think my biggest lesson was to understand first who was providing the critique, what their experience is, and what their relation to the work / project is. That alone helps you understand the position from where the criticism originated, and it is up to you to adjust accordingly. Next Is being able to ask for feedback, to be clear about what you are struggling with and where you would like the work to go. If you don’t know what flavour you want, no one can help you adjust your ingredients. So having somewhat of an idea or direction with the work supports the process of feedback like no tomorrow, as I think feedback should be a discussion, not just someone yapping at you. Finally, I think its important to critique “hard” – to provide it in the way that you would find helpful, to ask where the person is struggling, and to see where they might want to take it (much like my suggestion for asking for feedback).
The above skills come under the umbrella of really knowing your own practice. Ive had the privilege to understand how my creativity works, how I am inspired, what motivates me and how I can jump around and take action to spark my process. This understanding helps me get around many disciplines more effectively, knowing how to translate and communicate purely out of a deep understanding of creative process.
Finally, something that I think aligns with both feedback and the idea of understanding our practices, is the idea of playfulness within our work. I think the ability to play, and approach work playfully, allows you to break down walls and see connections that were non-existent prior to that. So much of my practice has been finding the right people and creating a space where we can come together and cook. It has been my experience that, whatever we have ended up with, it looks (and works) great because each collaborator brought high-quality ingredients, there was passion in their process, and they engaged at their full capacity (and maybe even pushed past it through the support of a collective process). I think if you can shake your own walls and see past boundaries, remain curious and consistently “look”, “notice” and understand, you will always find a way past creative block.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always keen to collaborate. I think I’m rather bias given my thesis research and experience, but collaboration has been such a big aspect of my creative practice and my research practice. It is through collaboration that I’m able to see new colours and speak additional languages, and my collaborators fill the gaps of my skillset or process.
At the same time, I think it’s challenge to pin down what we define as “collaboration”. I wrote a 140 page paper about it and I still have a rough, working and ever-changing definition; collaboration to me is any form of collective or joint process, whether that be a zoom call, an editing session, a week of co-creation, or consultations, there are way too many types of collaboration (even before we begin discussing the “exchange” that may or may not happen), yet I think collaboration boils down to “figuring it out together”. Regardless, and to avoid being lost in the research sauce, I’ll leave it with yes, let’s collaborate.
I’m open to being a thought-partner; whether that be regarding creative or design strategy, approaching collaboration, campaign design, galleries and exhibitions, reach out to me if you’re looking to talk through an idea. I enjoy providing feedback in a variety of places, as it teaches me so much more about another discipline when I am able to live in your world, understand your ways of being and making, and then provide something that could spark your flow. Or if you just want to talk about art and creativity, I’m really inspired by questioning what it is and how it works. Someone once told me that I seemed like the councillor for creative block, so let’s run it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sahilmroke.com
- Instagram: @sahilmroke & @motorwaystudios
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahil-mroke-328a44142/
Image Credits
Branding and Identity for Khanvict & Raaginder’s “Arrival” Tour
Portfolio Website splash page
59 Views Above Surrey, Utility Box wrap design, Surrey, BC
The Butterfly Garden, 400 butterflies all created in collaboration with guests of the opening night of the 2024 Emily Carr grad exhibition
Sunset Slices
From & Beyond Design, a Design Research Journal created by the 2024 Master of Design cohort at Emily Carr University
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
