Zool Suleman
Individual
Roles
Artist, Educator, Organizer, WriterBiography
Zool Suleman is an advocate, writer, journalist, and cultural collaborator. He is the Editor of Rungh and the Executive Director of the Rungh Cultural Society. He co-founded Rungh (1991), as a national South Asian focused arts initiative and relaunched Rungh in 2017 as a creative platform for Indigenous, Black and racialized artist conversations. As an arts advocate, he protested against the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exclusionary art practices as an active member of the Artists’ Coalition for Local Colour. He was a founding member of the Minquon Panchayat, one of Canada’s first national IBPOC-led artist movements which challenged the lack of anti-racism initiatives in Canada’s artist-run-centres and arts institutions. Appointed by the BC Minister of Culture, he co-chaired a province-wide Status of the Artist Committee, which was instrumental in the formation of the BC Arts Council. Over the last three decades, he has been involved in various capacities with the Canada Council for the Arts, Heritage Canada, the Province of BC and the City of Vancouver. In addition to his engagements as a cultural connector, he advocates for immigrants and refugees and has been active in national and local civil society initiatives against racism, racial profiling and Islamophobia.Rungh, 2024