Abstract:

Working in photography, sculpture, mixed media portraiture, and protest performance, New York-based artist Jaishri Abichandani archives her feminist, queer, and trans South Asian community. In her early work, she photographed drag artists and genderqueer performers at desi parties in the early 2000s, and in a series of ongoing portraits titled Jasmine Blooms at Night she paints tributary portraits of South Asian cultural and political workers (artists, activists, academics, and public figures). In a series of small interactive sculptures, she captures the sartorial and gestural language of feminist protests in the 2017 US #MeToo movement and 2019 occupation of Delhi’s Shaheen Bhag. Jaishri regularly invents goddess forms, amalgamated from a range of geographies and spiritual traditions, to birth queerer and more capacious futures. She centers sexuality, sensation, and excess through iridescent paints; employs intricate mirrored, embroidered, and rhinestoned embellishments; and includes whips, feathers, and dildos. Her invocation of the sacred not only turns everyday subjects into saintly figures, but she also uses these mythic themes to manifest the endurance of patriarchal violence. She critiques expansions of US empire and Hindu fundamentalism; she also sculpts someone who raped her.

Jaishri has been formative to my path toward becoming a scholar and artist. Certainly, her vibrant aesthetic and community mentorship have shaped the auntyness I perform in my drag. But her influence runs even deeper. The first queer South Asian performers I ever witnessed, at age 18, were D’Lo and YaliniDream who were curated into a gallery opening for SAWCC [South Asian Women’s Creative Collective], which Jaishri founded. D’Lo and YaliniDream also feature in Jaishri’s series Jasmine Blooms at Night. Several years later, my first dip into the art world in 2008 involved, at the recommendation of a senior colleague, bringing Jaishri to exhibit a small set of works at Williams College when I worked there. In 2017, Jaishri included my performance work into her retrospective of South Asian American art, and she then created sculpture of that performance. This interview is a testament then, not only to her expansive body of work, but also the generosity of her practice.

摘要：

纽约艺术家 Jaishri Abichandani 从事摄影、雕塑、混合媒体肖像画和抗议表演，记录了她的女权主义者、酷儿和跨南亚社区。在她的早期作品中，她在 2000 年代初期的德西派对上拍摄了变装艺术家和性别酷儿表演者，以及一系列正在进行的名为《夜间茉莉花绽放》的肖像画她为南亚文化和政治工作者（艺术家、活动家、学者和公众人物）绘制了支流肖像。在一系列小型互动雕塑中，她捕捉了 2017 年美国 #MeToo 运动和 2019 年占领德里沙欣巴格期间女权主义抗议活动的着装和手势语言。Jaishri 定期发明女神形式，融合了一系列地理和精神传统，以出生酷儿和更广阔的未来。她通过彩虹色的颜料集中了性欲、感觉和放纵；采用复杂的镜面、刺绣和水钻装饰；包括鞭子、羽毛和假阳具。她对神圣的祈求不仅将日常对象变成了圣人，而且她还利用这些神话主题来表现父权暴力的忍耐力。她批评美国帝国和印度原教旨主义的扩张；她还雕刻了强奸她的人。

Jaishri 对我成为学者和艺术家的道路形成了影响。当然，她充满活力的审美和社区指导塑造了我在变装中表现出的阿姨气质。但她的影响力更为深远。我在 18 岁时目睹的第一批南亚酷儿表演者是 D'Lo 和 YaliniDream，他们被策划到 Jaishri 创立的 SAWCC [南亚女性创意集体] 的画廊开幕中。D'Lo 和 YaliniDream 也在 Jaishri 的系列茉莉花在夜间盛开. 几年后，我在 2008 年第一次涉足艺术世界时，在一位资深同事的推荐下，我在威廉姆斯学院工作时带 Jaishri 去展出了一小部分作品。2017 年，Jaishri 将我的表演作品纳入了她的南亚裔美国艺术回顾展，然后她创作了那场表演的雕塑。这次采访不仅证明了她广泛的工作，也证明了她慷慨的实践。