Subject Area

Architecture, Art, Art History/Criticism/Conservation

Abstract

Through the process of Mashq, an interdisciplinary practice, loosely translated as exercise, repetition or circumambulation- I utilize both references from my immediate surroundings, as well as Indo-Persian history to investigate institutions as a continual colonial legacy. The complexities of my concerns are explored through a cross disciplinary approach of painting, sculpting, performance and video installations. I explore the relation between contrasting mediums, aspiring to mediate static and moving images through an aesthetic that embodies the essence of miniature painting practice.

In this paper I will explain three works that were part of my Graduate Show. Expanding on their relationship to concepts and references made in works that played key role in the development of the works exhibited and highlighting the connections I have made between works produced in the graduate program.

Through these works I investigate what Arundhati Roy questions, what happens when imagination is bombarded and colonized before it even begins to imagine? I suppose it begins to symbolize a fragile structures, hopelessly unable to sustain themselves representing crumbling architecture of corporatized pedagogy. The a work is critique of the concept of whiteness which according to Chris Hedge is not about skin color or even race. It is about willful blindness used to justify white supremacy to defend exploitation, racism and the crimes of Empire. It's about the conditioning of subaltern mind and body to be complicit in performing the labor of keeping that structure intact. The works speak of the assimilation of colonial mindset to a point where the subaltern body becomes part of the structure that continues to sustain the lie of whiteness and its institutions.

Degree Date

Spring 5-18-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.F.A.

Department

Division of Art

Advisor

Ira Greenberg

Second Advisor

Lauren Woods

Third Advisor

Anna Lovatt

Notes

South Asian, Indo-Persian Miniature Painting, Postcolonial theory, Structure, institutions, Whiteness, whitewashed.

Number of Pages

16

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.