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© 2017 Virgina Allison Harbin All Rights Reserved ENCOUNTERS IN EXCESS: TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN CONTEMPORARY INSTALLATION ART by VIRGINIA ALLISON HARBIN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School- New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Art History written under the direction of Dr. Tatiana Flores and approved by _______________________________ _______________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Encounters in Excess: Transnational Feminisms in Contemporary Installation Art by VIRGINIA ALLISON HARBIN Dissertation Director: Dr. Tatiana Flores This dissertation investigates video-based installation practices of three nonwestern contemporary women artists working since the 1990s: Indian artist Nalini Malani (b. 1946), Trinidadian-U.K. Roshini Kempadoo (b. 1959), and Pakistani-U.S. artist Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969). While recent scholarship astutely theorizes the immersive and interactive potential of video-based installation works, it has yet to address what this experiential encounter yields within the context of gendered and racial difference. Arguing for the importance of both historical context as well as an analysis of the content of installation works, this dissertation offers a theoretical construct of strategic excess to describe both the material and metaphorical engagement with gender that is at the basis of each of these artist’s practices. Through this strategic excess these installations confront and challenge the gendered complexity of globalization and concomitant nationalist agendas. In this ethical encounter fostered through an immersive excess, their works also represent a new formal practice that currently exists beyond the margins of art historical discourses. The very idea of a transnational feminist praxis has yet to be fully delineated in art historical discourse. As such, it exceeds the discourse itself. ii Traversing across three distinct cultural contexts and three very different types of installation practices, this dissertation reveals that the enormity of the task of a transnational feminism is not impossible, but rather, is a compelling opportunity for discourse to exceed itself and transform into something new. Focusing on one artist at a time, this dissertation charts three different modes of excess, which, while all fundamentally different, can be united under their shared production of an ethical encounter between the viewer and the work itself. The immersive installations of these three artists all portray a multiplicity of female protagonists, who, through temporal and geographical leaps in video sequences and animation, fuse historical pasts with contemporary realities in India, Pakistan, Trinidad, and their diasporas. Troubling conceptions of South Asian and Caribbean feminine identity, these artists’ works evade essentializing definitions and stereotypes of race, gender, and nationhood. 1 Their works materialize a radical agency for the subaltern woman that exceeds not only the historical and ongoing gendered oppression and violence, but also the boundaries between art, literature, and political engagement. Rather than charting a historiography of these artist’s practices, this dissertation instead engages with their works ontologically, that is, it asks: what exactly do their works evoke? What is a transnational feminist installation practice? Contextualing the mythic and imaginative scope of these installation practices within their sociological and historical conditions, this dissertation engages with a metaphysical query into the power of art. Ultimately, all three 1 My understanding of the role of gender dynamics in the construction of nationalist legacies stems primarily from the work of Anne McClintock, especially her iii artists discussed in this dissertation engage with an intersectional feminist approach to representation, and through the evolution of their practices into immersive installation formats, this approach is revealed as a powerful tool for producing an ethical encounter with both the subaltern woman as well as with difference more generally conceived. As such, this intersectional feminist approach is important not just for feminist concerns of gender violence, oppression, and inequality, but rather, can be conceived of as a methodological tool that can be utilized in other contexts, other situations, and different concerns. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their guidance throughout this process. In addition, a very special thank you to Dr. Howard Singerman, my undergraduate advisor, who first introduced me to the possibilities inherent to a feminist approach towards Art History, as well as Dr. Melissa Ragain for guiding me along and helping me formulate my ideas and writing style. You are all wonderful teachers and mentors. Thank you to the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers, most especially to Dr. Mia Bay for guiding me through my final year of writing, my colleagues Tasia Milton, Miya Carey, and Nafisa Tanjeem, and the wonderful Mia Kissil. You all helped me grow as a writer and person throughout this incredible year. I would also like to thank my colleague Dr. Tashima Thomas for all of her support and our rich conversations about art history. And thank you to my friend Jane Wolterding who made graduate school, not only bearable but also fun. And a special thanks to my best friend since high school, Dr. Leslie Goldberg. As always, a very special thank you to my parents for their continued encouragement and support: you two are amazing people and I’m so lucky to have you. v Table of Contents Abstract………………..………………………………………………….........ii-iv Acknowledgements.……………………………...………………………….……v Table of Contents……………………................…………………………..…..…vi List of Illustrations……………..…………………………………….…....…vii-xii Introduction Ethical Encounters: the Installations of Nalini Malani, Roshini Kempadoo, and Shahzia Sikander ………………...…….....…..1-7 Chapter One Exceeding Art History.…………………………………..…………….8-69 Chapter Two Corporeal Excess: Nalini Malani’s In Search of Vanished Blood (2012)………………………………..70-121 Chapter Three Temporal Excess: Roshini Kempadoo’s Amendments (2007)…….122-180 Chapter Four Abstracted Excess: Shahzia Sikander’s Gopis with the Good Hair…………………………………….…....181-244 Conclusion Intersectional Feminisms and Ontological Art Histories...………..245-250 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….....251-266 vi List of Illustrations Chapter One Figure 1.1 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany 2012. Four screen projections, five rotating Mylar cylinders with watercolor. Figure 1.2 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), second installation view from Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, 2012. Figure 1.3 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from Galerie LeLong, New York, 2013. Screen projections depict the faces of the performer who enacts scenes from Devi’s short story “Draupadi.” Figure 1.4 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view and film still of from Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, 2012. Close up of crouching woman’s face beneath rotating Mylar cylinders. Figure 1.5 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from Galerie LeLong, New York, 2013. Close up of screen projection of nude woman’s body overlaid with drawn images projected through rotating Mylar cylinders. Figure 1.6 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from Galerie LeLong, New York, 2013. Close up of screen projection of nude woman’s body overlaid with drawn images projected through rotating Mylar cylinders. Figure 1.7 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from Galerie LeLong, New York, 2013. Close up of watercolor figures on Mylar cylinders. Figure 1.8 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view from the Vadhera Art Gallery, New Delhi, India, 2014. Screen shot of turbaned men holding machine guns from single channel video projection. Image by author. Figure 1.9 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation view of Galerie LeLong, New York, 2013. vii Figure 1.10 Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain (2005), close up of two screens, one with a cow and the other with a woman’s torso from the Exhibition Retrospective of Nalini Malani at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2014. Image by author. Figure 1.11 Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain (2005), close up of screen with woman’s face and a Coca- Cola bindi dot view from the Exhibition Retrospective of Nalini Malani at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi., 2014. Image by author. Figure 1.12 Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain (2005), installation view of screens filled with historical photographs of women spinning in India from at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Exhibition Retrospective of Nalini Malani, 2014. Image by author. Figure 1.13 Nalini Malani, Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain (2005), installation view from at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Exhibition Retrospective of Nalini Malani, 2014. Image by author. Figure 1.14 Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), installation