Annihilation of Masks: Undoing Hierarchy and Patriarchy in South Asian Diasporic Communities

Abstract

The appearance of South Asians in contemporary American art history is partial at best, fragmented by categorizations that insufficiently describe the multiple realities of cultural experience. The picture of diasporic culture is faded by our historically undocumented status. Labourers immigrating prior to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act were made to disappear into permissible, if segregated, ethnic communities or be criminalized for maintaining a culture characterized by authorities as implicitly deviant or queer. Not coincidentally, the late 1960s was also the beginning of lgbtq legalization in the United States1—a process which, like inclusion and recognition of South Asian Americans, remains incomplete and, like discrimination against South Asians, hinges on a rhetoric of unfamiliarity as implicitly unnatural. Unable to function above board as intersectionally South Asian, artists in our community are dissected by arts institutions into “Muslim artist,” “AfricanAmerican artist,” “media artist,” or “queer artist” rather than “Bangla artist,” “Goan artist,” “anticaste artist,” or simply “artist.” These practices are descended from Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Dalit, or Adivasi traditions, and formed in the US through institutions of culture and higher learning—though not always mfa programs