Finding it challenging to adapt to small-town life, she worked to save up for a trip back to London, where she stayed for a year.
She received a BA in Fine Art at Falmouth University, Cornwall in England (1978), then moved back to Canada where she still lives.
[4] Dhaliwal's art tells the story of her life as a global citizen by cleverly exploring the complex relationships between memory and place, language and colour, sport and ritual, family and society, and the histories of colonialism and migration focusing on racism, conflict, and identity.
Southall:Childplay (chromira print, 2009) covers an entire wall with her own collection of coloured pencils, which she used to play with.
In When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colors (mixed media on graph paper, 2010), Dhaliwal gives names to colours: crushed raspberry, Indian summer, burnt persimmon.
[5][6] Dhaliwal's videowork olive, almond and mustard (2010) depicts her childhood memory of growing up in Britain having her long black hair washed with white yoghurt and oiled and braided by her mother.
[5][6] The cartographer's mistake: the Radcliffe Line (chromira print, 2012) depicts the partition of the Indian subcontinent in Marigold flowers.