‘This is for people like us’: KPU unveils mural celebrating queer South Asian community

In her early 20s, Jag Nagra felt like the only queer Punjabi woman in the world.

She hadn’t been exposed to other queer people beyond a few figures on TV and wondered how she would come out to her parents.

But through Sher Pride, a charity that supports queer South Asians and allies in the Lower Mainland, and its founder, Amar Sangha, Nagra found a sense of belonging and community knowing there were others like her.

“Today, I’m incredibly proud to say that I’m living my life openly. I have the love and support of my parents, my family,” Nagra said. “Everybody knows I’m married and my wife and I have two amazing children.”

A visual artist by trade, Nagra has worked with clients like the Vancouver Canucks and painted public murals with South Asian motifs in Surrey and Vancouver.

Her latest project is also a mural — this time featured above the window panels at the Cedar lounge on Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey campus.

“People Like Us” marks Nagra’s first LGBTQIA+-focused mural, which was sponsored by Sher Pride, KPU’s Office of the Provost and Faculty of Arts, an Irving K. Barber grant, and KDocsFF, which is the university’s social justice documentary film festival.

The mural was unveiled to the KPU community during a ceremony on Feb. 12.

“I felt differently than I did when I was painting,” Nagra told The Runner. “[At the unveiling], it just all hit me, and seeing how many people came out to celebrate this, it’s just how I wish my 20-year-old self would have been able to see in the future — we would be seen celebrated.”

The mural, in Nagra’s signature style of incorporating saturated and bright colours, features a peacock to represent the Indian community. Its flowing feathers form a dupatta — a shawl originating from the Indian subcontinent — that’s draped across the head of a South Asian drag queen.

“I want to acknowledge the incredible local drag performers who, over the past few years, have redefined what it means to be brown, what it means to be queer or trans, and, most importantly, what it means to be proud,” Nagra said during the ceremony.

“Seeing them bring such beauty and light in a world that can feel so dark is profoundly inspiring. This mural, in many ways, is an ode to them.”

Beside the drag queen is a rose in white, pink, and blue — the colours of the trans flag.

“It represents the trans community, but also holds remembrance for the lives that have been lost,” Nagra said. “It’s both a celebration of visibility and a moment of honour.”

The mural also includes a bald eagle carrying an intersex-inclusive progress Pride flag in its beak. Mural producer Greg Chan, who is also KDocsFF’s community outreach director and a retired KPU English instructor, told The Runner the eagle is meant to be a symbol of the Indigenous community and its deep red matches KPU’s burgundy branding.

Beside the eagle is a rainbow with the words “love is love” translated in Punjabi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Hindi, and Tamil.

Chan said the seed was planted for Nagra to paint a mural at KPU about four years ago through KDocsFF’s community partnership with Sher Pride and a discussion he had with Sangha. When Nagra had an opening in her busy schedule, Chan got the gears in motion late last year to have her join KPU as a muralist in residence for January.

Chan created an advisory committee for the mural made up of himself as well as Provost Diane Purvey, Faculty of Arts Dean Shelley Boyd, Wilson School of Design Associate Dean Carley Hodgkinson, policy studies instructor Jennifer Hardwick, fine arts student Eva Ediger, Destiny Lang from KPU Pride, 2025 KDocsFF Emerging Filmmaker Residency Award winner Shanthini Balasubramanian, and Sher Pride’s Joshna Hirani and Karn Sahota.

Chan said the mural is powerful and a living symbol of being out and proud.

“When you walk through the building, it really draws you in,” Chan said. “I think it’s literally speaking to people who gather in this space and pass through this space as public art [does]. It’s also public art as resistance.”

Sahota hopes brown queer students who see the mural take away that they are accepted and don’t have to hide.

“When I was a young kid going to university, I was always very anxious and scared,” Sahota told The Runner. “If I had this representation as I was walking the halls, I would probably have built more confidence earlier on as a young queer person.”

Nagra named the mural “People Like Us” after she completed it and was reflecting on what it meant.

“It just came to me one day — this is for people like us,” she said. “There are more people like us out there, and often when we’re struggling with coming out, we feel very isolated, a lot of people go through depression. [It’s] just giving people hope that it’s not just an individual journey.”