scholarly journals Embodiments of bitter narratives: constructing possible Indo-Caribbean identities through the karela

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Swamy ◽  
Sarojini Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Bitter Gourd ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Critical Conversation ◽  
Alternative Text

This critical conversation between multidisciplinary artist Sarojini Lewis and curator Priya Swamy explores the possibilities of exhibiting and telling histories of Indian indentured labour otherwise. Focusing on the installation Why Do You Have a Face Like a Sopropo? (Worldmuseum Rotterdam, 2020), Lewis details why and how she sees a bitter, resilient and uniquely shaped vegetable like bitter gourd (‘karela’ in Hindi, ‘sopropo’ in Sranang Tongo) as an extension of memory and ancestry. The authors begin by discussing the karela as an ‘alternative text’ (Mahabir 2009), before contextualising Lewis' wider artistic practice. They then discuss in depth the installation Why Do You Have a Face Like a Sopropo?, its implications, and its methods. Finally, as a form of conclusion, both authors reflect upon what it means to have worked on this installation together, from within their distinct positionalities, and what this may imply for Indian indentured labour histories and experiences in the context of global Indian diaspora narratives.

Screen Presence

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Monteiro
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Andy Warhol ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Popular Film ◽  
Robert Rauschenberg ◽  
Mona Hatoum ◽  
Source Materials

Cinema plays a major role in contemporary art, yet the deeper influence of its diverse historical forms on artistic practice has received little attention. Working from a media and cultural studies perspective, Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media, and art since the 1950s through the examples of four pivotal figures – Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon. While their film-related works may appear primarily as challenges to conventional cinema, these artists draw on overlooked forms of popular film culture that have been commonplace, and even dominant, in specific social contexts. Through analysis of a range of examples and source materials, Stephen Monteiro demonstrates the dependence of contemporary artists on cinema’s shifting applications and interpretations, offering a fresh understanding of the enduring impact of everyday media on how we make and view art.

Screening Statues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Jacobs ◽  
Susan Felleman ◽  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film History ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

‘A disoriented vision of … fact’: Brian Friel, Francis Bacon, and Faith Healer

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Zosia Kuczyńska
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Faith Healer ◽  
Brian Friel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Composition Process

The Brian Friel Papers at the NLI reveal a long and relatively unexplored history of major and minor influences on Friel's plays. As the archive attests, these influences manifest themselves in ways that range from the superficial to the deeply structural. In this article, I draw on original archival research into the composition process of Friel's genre-defining play Faith Healer (1979) to bring to light a model of influence that operates at the level of artistic practice. Specifically, I examine the extent to which Friel's officially unacknowledged encounter with a book of interviews with painter Francis Bacon influenced the play in terms of character, language, and form. I suggest that Bacon's creative process – incorporating his ideas on the role of the artist, the workings of chance, and the extent to which art does violence to fact – may have had a major influence on both the play's development and on Friel's development as an artist.

Stimulating Flexible Citizenship: The Impact of Dutch and Indian Migration Policies on the Lives of Highly Skilled Indian Migrants in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Katherine Kirk ◽  
Ellen Bal
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
Corporate Rights ◽  
Highly Skilled Migrants ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
Migration Theories ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis paper explores the relationship between migration and integration policies in the Netherlands, diaspora policies in India, and the transnational practices of Indian highly skilled migrants to the Netherlands. We employ anthropological transnational migration theories (e.g., Ong 1999; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) to frame the dynamic interaction between a sending and a receiving country on the lives of migrants. This paper makes a unique contribution to migration literature by exploring the policies of both sending and receiving country in relation to ethnographic data on migrants. The international battle for brains has motivated states like the Netherlands and India to design flexible migration and citizenship policies for socially and economically desirable migrants. Flexible citizenship policies in the Netherlands are primarily concerned with individual and corporate rights and privileges, whereas Indian diaspora policies have been established around the premise of national identity.

Dynamics Of Indian Diaspora Literature: A Panoramic View

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 507-511
Author(s):  
S.SOPHIA CHRISTINA
Keyword(s):  
Broad Context ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Panoramic View ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Diaspora Literature ◽  
Diasporic Literature ◽  
Multiple Characteristics ◽  
Indian Contribution

Diaspora Theory has affected the literature of every language of the globe with its multiple characteristics. This literature is commonly referred to as Diasporic or Expatriate Literature. Diasporic Literature is a very broad idea and a paragliding term that involves all those literary works published by writers outside their home nation, but these works are linked to indigenous culture and background. All those authors can be considered as diasporic authors in this broad context, who write outside their nation but through their work stayed linked to their homeland. Diasporic literature has its origins in the sense of loss and alienation resulting from migration and expatriation. Diasporic literature generally deals with alienation, displacement, existential rootlessness, nostalgia, identity quest. Migrants suffer from the pain of being away from their homes, their motherland memories, the anguish of leaving behind everything familiar agonizes migrants ' minds. The diasporic Indians, too, are not breaking their ancestral land connection. There is a search for continuity and an astral impulse, an attempt to search for their origins. Settlement in alien territory leads to dislocation for them. Dislocation can be seen as a rupture with the ancient identity. By debating characteristics of expatriate or diasporic literature, the article tried to examine the reflection of Diaspora Theory and its multiple aspects in literature. The Indian contribution to diasporic literature was also evaluated in English.

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