Technologies of Drag: South Asians Queering American Art Through Craft and Design
Affiliated Society or Committee Name: Diasporic Asian Art NetworkThe image of South Asian diaspora in North America, Africa, and Europe is faded by historically undocumented status, as immigrant laborers made to disappear into permissible, if segregated, ethnic communities, or as bodies designated Other and criminalized for maintaining a culture characterized by authorities as implicitly deviant or queer. The late 1960s was the beginning of South Asian and LGBTQ legalization in the United States with the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. This panel explores intersections between contemporary artists of South Asian background working in the United States, with respect to how they utilize non-traditional skills, references, and practices within the context of contemporary art as a methodology that has been described as “queer,” probing both historic and present day divisions, and potentially unifying frames of reference that South Asian American artists bring to the discussion of American art. Hasan Elahi makes use of engineering, visualization, and surveillance technologies and “the poor image”: the democratically liberated effigy of the formerly commoditized image that was, but is no longer, subject to social control. Brendan Fernandes uses his training in western classical and modern dance to create performances and art objects that infuse white aesthetics with African energies. Discussant scholars Santhi Kavuri-Bauer and Alpesh Kantilal Patel will address the panelists on the subject of South Asian American artists’ place and relationships within the fields of American culture and art worlds, and on the queer, anti-racist, and transnational approaches that the artists bring to their work, respectively.
Field of Study:
Chair:
Anuradha Vikram,UCLA Department of Art - anu@curativeprojects.net
Discussants:
Santhi Kavuri-Bauer,San Francisco State University - santhi@sfsu.edu
and
Alpesh Kantilal Patel,Florida International University - alpesh.patel@fiu.edu