The Calgary Flames are set to have their first South Asian Celebration game on Saturday, and the artist is sharing her inspiration behind the colourful jerseys.
Zoe Harveen Kaur Sihota, a first-generation Canadian to parents from India, says designing the jerseys was “beyond anything I could have imagined.”
The Calgary Flames asked South Asian Community Ambassador Raghav to recommend a local artist, to which he mentioned Sihota. When the offer came, she was “over the moon.”
She says the opportunity to design the jersey was a “full circle moment,” as she has been attending games with her family since she was younger.
“My dad used to take us to games, he would buy whatever tickets he could afford, obviously as immigrant parents, and he did this with my older sister, he did this with my older cousins. He would buy tickets for us, he would get a rotisserie chicken from Safeway, and we’d go to games,” Sihota said to OMNI Television and Hockey Night in Punjabi.
“So getting this opportunity was such a milestone, obviously doing the South Asian celebration night logo by working with the Calgary Flames and having all those memories with my dad. It just felt like a huge opportunity and almost like it was fate.”
Sihota explains she has always been interested in art, having been in art camps since she was a child, and as she got older continuing her painting and illustrating joy in university.
She says she dabbled in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, trying different mediums to express herself.
“I live in Calgary and I’m Punjabi myself, so I have a lot of Western influence. But coming from this Punjabi background, I wanted to make artwork that represented both sides of me, and I never saw that represented in media at that time, ” Sihota said.
“When I came home from university, I just showed my mom just as like something cool that I did. And she told me to start posting it on social media. So I started posting on social media and from then it grew like crazy.”
She has grown her social media following with her artwork and networking and has been featured on BBC, CBC, Elle Magazine, and Buzzfeed.
Her artwork is meant to educate and empower the South Asian community and beyond, so she focuses on advocacy and representation.
“I used to do a lot of commissions, and now I’m more so do projects that are really meaningful to me, and really impactful to the community,” she said.
Calgary Flames logo meaning
Sihoto says there are three main points of focus, with the first being the peacock, which she says is meant to represent beauty and grace within South Asian cultures and communities.
“That was something I wanted to highlight because our South Asian communities and cultures are so beautiful, it is so vast, and every single culture within the South Asian community is so beautiful and intricate. So I really wanted to highlight that through a common symbol,” she explained.
The second is the floral patterns weaved throughout the logo, which Kaur Sihota explains are meant to represent the different South Asian countries, unity among them, heritage, and the “richness of our cultures.”
“That’s something that I wanted to highlight because that’s something that we all share in common … our past and our heritage,” she said.
Lastly, the flaming C was reconstructed slightly. Sihota says the top of the C showed South Asian architecture to highlight its beauty, and to show the heritage and story.
The four main colours are green, a symbol of agriculture, red for power and to represent the Flames, saffron for bravery, sacrifice, and courage, and maroon for strength and resilience, with her example of resilience being arriving in a new country.
“The piece overall is supposed to be about unity and intertwining all of these communities with little hints of representation here and there,” Sihota said.
Finally seeing the jersey
The Calgary Flames released a video which shows Sihota entering the dressing room to see the jersey for the first time in person.
When she saw them, she explained she was “floored” and “had no words.”
“This is so cool, I might cry.”
We surprised our South Asian Celebration logo designer Zoe Harveen Kaur Sihota with a jersey and chatted with her about her design and what it means to her pic.twitter.com/kayloZ8eGc
— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) March 25, 2024
“When I first started it, it didn’t feel real,” Sihota said. “But seeing it on the jersey made it feel so much more real before it was like just another deliverable for the Calgary Flames and that’s great and I did this for the community.”
She says the choice of yellow with the gold shimmer by the team gave it a true representation of what it means to be South Asian.
“My dad was there with me and we were both just in awe that something like this could have been produced,” Sihota said.
“It was a really meaningful moment for me specifically because I never thought I could do something like this but also for my dad who came with me who probably has never seen this type of representation in his life. So it was it was so exciting.”
Open Gallery 5 items
The puck drops for the first-ever South Asian Celebration Game at 8 p.m. when the Flames take on the Los Angeles Kings.
There will be a special ceremonial face-off where Mayor Jyoti Gondek, Calgary Flames South Asian Community Ambassador and musician Raghav, and APNA Hockey Co-Founder Dampy Brar will join Sihota.
There will also be a pre-game ceremony with music by DJ Joash Charles as the players warm up, dancers from the Nachda Punjab Bhangra Academy and Dhol drummers from Calgary’s Finest Dholison in the main concourse as fans enter the Saddledome, and South Asian cuisine for fans to enjoy.
At the first intermission, there will be some minor hockey from APNA Hockey, and the second one will feature a traditional Bhangra dance performance from the Nachda Punjab Bhangra Academy and Calgary’s Finest Dholisduring.
With files from OMNI Television and Hockey Night in Punjabi