DOMESTIC POLICY: SAWCC’s 12th Annual Visual Arts Exhibition
Curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado
Opening Reception: November 12, 2009, 6:30–8:30 pm
Curator/Artists’ Talk: November 18, 2009, 7:00–9:00 pm
In contextualizing the works, Aranda elaborates how each artist’s work reflects, debates, and discusses these ideas. Asma Kazmi’s works present the viewer with images that bear visible outward signs of poverty and the objects associated with them and are a startling reminder of the vulnerability of the individual in relation to the economy, both local and global. Shalalae Jamil’s powerful photographic imagery notes the “rules of engagement” in private spaces, underscoring the nature of power relationships in a single, unmistakable statement. Divya Mehra’s sculpture, made from a neon sign that unequivocally states “I’m fucking you,” is enhanced by her explication of the work as “a mental position held passively by both parties in a dysfunctional relationship.”
Swati Khurana’s Wedding Trousseau relates to traditions and rituals relating to marriage and their influence on gender and the social roles of women. She notes: “To me, the seductive promises of rituals comprise a huge part of domestic policy.” Gazelle Samizay’s beautiful and meditative video works recall the endless, repetitive acts that are a constant part of everyday domestic life, which turn into a kind of symbolic exorcism. Sa’dia Rehman’s installation, Coming, addresses the movement of the artist’s family from Pakistan to the United States, which caused problems in her own domestic sphere, and alludes to immigrant issues that occupy a tenuous and fraught place among domestic policies.
Jaishri Abichandani strives throughout her work to examine networks of power and how these are experienced on an individual and collective level. Her work, Allah hu Akhbar, is fashioned from leather whips, wire, nails, paint, and Swarovski crystals. The contradictory nature of these materials—intended simultaneously to repel and seduce—ironically tie together choice and obedience, dominance and submission, visual splendor and humility. Throughout the works in this exhibition, the meanings of “domestic policy” are explored and redefined.
