Uncommitted Crimes: The Defiance of the Artistic Imagination

by Tara Atluri

Overview

Theodor Adorno once remarked that, "...every work of art is an uncommitted crime." This book is a tribute to political artists who deviate from the mainstream and create art that engages with questions of societal oppression, survival, and resistance. It draws on interviews with transnational artists whose work is representative of emerging trends in art, visual culture, and political aesthetics. Uncommitted Crimes reflects on a new generation of artists whose creative praxis, sensibilities, influences, and frames of reference derive from multiple national, religious, and cultural genealogies, and an ambivalent relationship to Western and European nationalisms. Courageously, these racialized, Indigenous, and migrant artists straddle the divides of many categories of identity in regards to gender, sexuality, and 'race.' Their art challenges the silently imbibed worship of whiteness, heteronormative patriarchies, and colonial settler ideologies of "home." These exceptional cultural producers enter into uncomfortable dialogues, creatively. Inspired by their visionary praxis, this book is an uncommitted crime, attempting to smuggle arresting artistic ideas into a site of intellectual imagi/nation. Artists whose works are explored in this book include: Andil Gosine, Syrus Marcus Ware, Elisha Lim; Amita Zamaan and Helen Lee; Shirin Fathi; Kara Springer; Rajni Perera; Joshua Vettivelu; Brendan Fernandes; Kerry Potts and Rebecca Belmore; The Mass Arrival Collective (Farrah Miranda, Graciela Flores Mendez, Tings Chak, Vino Shanmuganathan, and Nadia Saad). The book contains 65 pages of artwork.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771333931
Publisher:	Inanna Publications
Publication date:	08/20/2018
Series:	F.A.R. Art
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tara Atluri has a PhD in Sociology and has taught classes in gender studies, visual cultures, politics, and media studies at scholarly institutions throughout the world. She has also held several research fellowships at universities throughout Europe and Asia. As an artist and performer, she has participated at exhibitions and events such as the Edgy Feminist Arts Festival in Montreal, Quebec, and the Feminist Arts Conference held in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has been published in scholarly anthologies and iacademic journals as well as on a number of blogs. Her most recent book, Āzādī: Sexual Politics and Postcolonial Worlds, was published in 2016. She is an active in #WhyLoiter? and other social movements in the Indian subcontinent, throughout the Global South and transnationally. She currently lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Artistic Imagi/nations and Opening Scenes: By Way of Introduction 1

1 The Transient Aesthetic: The Timeless Archives of Andil Gosine, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Elisha Lim 18

2 A Shot in the Dark: Amita Zamaan and Helen Lee's Explosive Filmmaking 44

3 Fashion Crimes: Orientalism Frays in the Sartorial Worlds of Shirin Fathi 84

4 A Simple Strand? Kara Springer's Resplendant Minimalism 123

5 And Their Gods Were Blue-Eyed: Rajni Perera (Re)Colours the World 148

6 Smuggled Skin: Mass Arrival Finds Refuge in the Creative 178

7 Brown Skin, White Mirrors: Joshua Vettivelu's Enthralling Affect 203

8 Unsettled: Transitory Lovers and the Boundless Art of Brendan Fernandes 237

9 Seeing Red in the Streets: Taking Shelter in the Sublime Worlds of Kerry Potts and Rebecca Belmore 264

10 Should You Stay or Should You Go? Beyond a Blur of White Picket Fences 298

Acknowledgements 309