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Larissa Sansour, still from A Space Exodus (2009).

25: Sonia Khurana, Logic of Birds. 2006. Still from single channel video, loop.

I noticed, very belatedly, that my dossier was almost entirely Western European in its content. Particularly as I begin researching the body and performance it is important that I am critically thinking about whose ‘body’ is the body I talk about when I use such a concept, as Griselda Pollock asks in her essay for e-flux (Journal #92, June 2018) named Action, Activism, and Art and/as Thought: A Dialogue with the Artworking of Sonia Khurana and Sutapa Biswas and the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt, is it not already performing an implicit, still-colonial racism? (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/204726/action-activism-and-art-and-as-thought-a-dialogue-with-the-artworking-of-sonia-khurana-and-sutapa-biswas-and-the-political-theory-of-hannah-arendt/, accessed 28/5/19).

The Logic of Birds is the first iteration of Sonia Khurana’s long-term performance project relating to the act of lying down. This act is a simple gesture loaded with social, cultural and psychological meaning and it has been included in this dossier as it relates to my interest in gesture and performance that seeks to transgress social norms. There are other threads through this work relating to my wider research into critical connections and vulnerability.

In regards to critical connections, Khurana states: “With the “lying down …” project, I have been asking myself: Can the critical possibilities offered by small acts of transgression be considered beyond their value as individual acts, for the potential of their accumulation? And can the dynamic build-up of infinitely small disturbances change structure into movement, a thing into a current?” (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/204726/action-activism-and-art-and-as-thought-a-dialogue-with-the-artworking-of-sonia-khurana-and-sutapa-biswas-and-the-political-theory-of-hannah-arendt/, accessed 28/5/19).

With regard to vulnerability, Pollock proposes that Khurana’s Lying Down anticipated Judith Butler’s writing around “elective vulnerability as a necessary political act when we try to resist in and reclaim the political right to public space, even at the risk of violence” where vulnerability “becomes the only language of resistance we now have” (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/204726/action-activism-and-art-and-as-thought-a-dialogue-with-the-artworking-of-sonia-khurana-and-sutapa-biswas-and-the-political-theory-of-hannah-arendt/, accessed 28/5/19). I have been aware of these writings by Judith Butler (and other theorists) relating to vulnerability and resistance, and intend to read further into these ideas as I progress through the MFA program. I have long held the belief that much of society’s issues stem from vulnerability and our collective shunning or fear of it, resulting in psychological defensiveness and inability to understand one another.

In considering Khurana’s work and how it relates to some key concepts in my own work, it may result in some experimentation next semester with performance (or performative presence, similar to aspects of Martin Creed’s work) in public space.

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Sutapa Biswas, b. India, 1962 Housewives with Steak Knives UK (1985) Pastels, acrylic and collage on paper, mounted on canvas [Source]

Bradford Council has refused to bow to pressure from Hindu groups over an iconic piece of artwork loaned to a New York museum.

Housewives With Steak Knives created by British conceptual artist Sutapa Biswas is part of the authority’s museums and galleries collection.

It is a self-portrait of Indian-born Biswas as the multi-armed Hindu Goddess Kali and was loaned to the Neuberger Museum for a special exhibition which ended earlier this month.

Following its display, as part of the exhibition British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009, the Forum for Hindu Awakening and Universal Society of Hinduism complained that the painting trivialises the sacred goddess.

Both groups called on the Council to stop displaying the artwork when it is returned from the exhibition in America.

Tony Stephens, the Council’s assistant director of cultural services, has now confirmed that while they have no plans to put it on display immediately, they will not rule out doing so in the future.

He said: “The painting Housewives With Steak Knives forms part of our extensive collection of eastern art and has been in the collection for more than 20 years and was displayed at Cartwright Hall for over ten years to critical acclaim.

“Sutapa Biswas produced this work in 1985 and the artistic intentions were very much about empowerment of herself as a young Indian establishing herself as an artist in England.

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Olivia Sterling, Minor Inconveniences, 2022 (Acrylic on linen, 120 x 100 cm).

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Olivia Sterling, A Heavy Tread, 2022 (Acrylic on linen, 120 x 100 cm).

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“A Becoming Resemblance”, Heather Dewey-Hagborg Fridman Gallery, NYC

“30 portraits created by the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg from cheek swabs and hair clippings sent to her by Chelsea Manning.”

“By algorithmically analyzing DNA extracted from Manning and using it to create 30 portraits of what someone with that genomic data might look like, Dewey-Hagborg has created a trenchant, if somewhat cerebral, commentary on not only the malleability of DNA data – the many ways it can be interpreted, and the inherent determinism of those interpretations – but also identity. ”