Naimah Amin @ Artexte
Winter 2024
Research residency with Artexte, art library, research center, and contemporary exhibition space, Montéal (QC)
“South Asian people form the largest visible minority group in Canada—however, given that only 6% of this population reside in Québec, and as a response to its ongoing invisibilization, many have come to describe this community as “invisible” [1]. As a queer artist who is a minority within this minority group, my artistic practice embodies for me a desire to situate myself within a larger South Asian diasporic tradition—the underrepresentation of which poses a significant challenge to those searching to access such knowledge. I come to Artexte with an eagerness to retrace part of this artistic lineage and bring to light the threads that relate my diasporic experience to queer South Asian histories and artistic practices that precede me.
I am starting this residency with the intent of producing an annotated thematic bibliography that maps out queer South Asian presence in Canadian contemporary art. I am particularly interested in the community of artists whose histories are connected to the 1970s wave of immigration. My vision is best echoed by the words of Gayatri Gopinath, who, on new possibilities derived from diasporic aesthetic practices disregarded by dominant history, describes queerness as a “conduit through which [we can] access the shadow spaces of the past and bring them into the frame of the present.” [2] At the core of my research is my fascination towards the ways in which self-representation for postcolonial migrants has functioned as an important tool of resistance to hegemonic culture which includes neoliberal formulations of queerness. What artistic methods and aesthetic languages emerge out of historical documents that chronicle the multiplicity of queer diasporic trajectories beyond their prosaic associations to dominant nation-states? In a context of globalization, how have the hopes and concerns of queer South Asian artists evolved over the decades outside of politics of representation? In what ways do our struggles for social justice align with the decolonial efforts of Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island? And finally, how much of what has been conserved allow us to speculate further on the traditions and practices that exist beyond documentation?”
Publication forthcoming.
Diversifying Academia: Contemporary
South Asian Art History (2022)
Library Residency with the Ethnocultural Art History Research (EAHR) Center and Concordia Libraries, under the supervision of John Latour and Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim, Montréal (QC)
Abstract:As course offerings in art history programs progressively move towards including the study of racialized and diasporic contemporary art within the Canadian art scene, researching contemporary art outside of the Global North is another step towards decentering whiteness in academia. However, students who attempt to research contemporary art practices in the Global South can encounter difficulties such as limited access to a wide array of written works that allows readers to obtain numerous perspectives on a particular subject of interest. In this short article, I put forward publications that respond to this gap in the Webster Library. I focus on books that critically engage with contemporary art in South Asia. I target publications by cultural practitioners in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Additionally, I propose the autoethnographic lens as a method of framing to subvert hegemonic ways of considering contemporary art in the Global South.