Ambika Trasi
Curating South Asian VOices With Care
In this edition of #SAIatHome, we speak with artist and curator Ambika Trasi, one of three jurors for South Asia Institute’s first virtual exhibition Diasporic Rhizome (March 15 - May 15).
Ambika Trasi is an artist, arts organizer, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her multidisciplinary, research-based practice considers the coloniality of power within images and sites. She is interested in the role that memory, language, and technology play in identity-making, community-building, and decolonizing in the diaspora. She was the managing director and curatorial assistant at Asia Contemporary Art Week from 2013 to 2017 and a board member of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective from 2015 to 2019. Trasi was an exhibition manager for shows held at Queens Museum in 2016 and Abrons Art Center in 2017. Recent curatorial projects include A Space For Monsters at Twelve Gates Arts, PA and Salman Toor: How Will I Know, co-curated with Christopher Y. Lew, at Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC.
Tell us about your role as a curator and how you would describe the relationship a curator forms with their artists, institutions and audiences?
I’m an arts organizer and an artist who occasionally curates. The relationships I have forged with artists fall outside of my work within institutions. I consider forming relationships with other artists and arts workers to be akin to community- and friendship-building; it is about building networks of support and care. The kinds of art spaces I have worked within have definitely informed the parameters and scope of the projects I have worked on, but the work usually remains the same: it is always about doing what you can to realize an artist’s vision, or if it’s a group exhibition, foregrounding the artists’ works as a way of communicating a certain narrative.
As an arts organizer, I am also a mediator or facilitator between the artist and audience, so my work is to contextualize the artist’s work, not just in terms of its present-day relevance, but also its relationship to art histories. That happens through writing and speaking about the work. All of this work is so collaborative, most especially in museums, where you are working with many, many people from various departments—from staff in Visitors Services, Gallery Assistants, Facilities, Education, Publications, Engineers, Art Handlers, Conservation, AV staff, Development, Communications, etc. In museums, staff in Interpretation, Access & Community, Public Programs, Family & Teen Programs, and Visitors Services and Gallery Assistants do so much to enable access to, and a comprehensive understanding of, the works that go on view in exhibitions.
“It’s also important for me to unlearn; to be conscious of the works and artists I am drawn to and to be critical of, and interrogate, my own “tastes” and the factors that may have informed my “tastes.””
What do you specifically think about in terms of curating a narrative for an exhibition? How can this narrative enable critical meaning, participation and discussion with artists and the public?
I always start with the people, so: who are artists I’d like to work with? What draws me to their work? What kinds of cross-connections exist between the artists I’m interested in, formally and/or in terms of their chosen subject matter? What are the constellations that can be built outward starting with one or two artists I know? Often, an idea for an exhibition can organically come out of these questions and from conversations (studio visits) with artists, which then informs the research, writing, and programming around it. The writing, didactics, and programming act as a conduit between the artists / their works and the public.
How are you rethinking curatorial practices to be more inclusive and more representative of the art of our times?
If you’re not being inclusive, it means you are contributing to—or being complacent about— major gaps in art historical canon and the systemic issues that perpetuate exclusivity in the field such as: white-supremacy and anti-blackness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, Brahminism. It isn’t just about the art of our times, but about challenging constructs, hierarchies, and hegemonic narratives. It’s also important for me to unlearn; to be conscious of the works and artists I am drawn to and to be critical of, and interrogate, my own “tastes” and the factors that may have informed my “tastes.”
What considerations and methodologies do you take when curating South Asian voices?
I actively avoid creating and upholding monolithic or homogenous narratives about South Asia and South Asian identity. I seek to challenge and complicate understandings and representations of the subcontinent and the diaspora. I try not to approach curating South Asian voices through specific methodologies beyond that.
That said, it is important to be mindful of, and to challenge, issues that often plague South Asia and the diaspora in order to create more inclusive spaces. A lot of work needs to be done to decenter the voices and narratives that have dominated the spotlight within the region and the diaspora, and to center the works of those who are often pushed to the margins— Dalit artists, and artists from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is also important to remind myself that, in the diaspora, South Asian artists and creative professionals are able to work in the arts today because a generation of queer South Asian artists organized before us and paved the way.
Can you speak more about why you believe contemporary art practices, specifically new media art, contribute towards a decolonization in the South Asian diaspora?
When it comes to decolonization in the South Asian diaspora, I am not just considering the relationship between South Asia and European imperialism, but also: caste apartheid; ethnonationalism (Hindutva ideology as well as ethnonationalist movements in other countries in South Asia); globalization and the various neoliberal projects that South Asian governments have taken on; the United States’ interference in the South Asian region (particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan); Islamophobia; India’s occupation of Kashmir; the experiences of Indigenous folx, refugees and migrants in South Asia.
It is exciting to see self-identified South Asian artists investigating these issues in their works with skill, rigorous research, and care, including some of the artists in Diasporic Rhizome.
Beyond the artists in South Asia Institute’s virtual exhibition, Morehshin Allahyari’s work is an excellent example of how new media art can be used as a tool to decolonize. Her work critiques digital colonialism and the use of photogrammetry and 3D scanning used by institutions and companies to reconstruct historical artifacts and sites, and also incorporates technologies in her own practice to consider archiving as a tool for resistance against such privatization efforts. And Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s social and activist-driven practice has involved digital security training, while her work at Equality Labs uses technology to give Dalit and caste-oppressed folx platforms for self-determination.
“It is exciting to see that artist communities in South Asia and in the diaspora are more closely connected than ever before thanks to technology and it has been inspiring to see the various acts and expressions of solidarity across the globe during the recent Shaheen Bagh protests, the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests, and the Farmers’ protests in India. ”
How do you see South Asian artists building community and addressing issues beyond identity?
Self-identified South Asian artists have been coming together to organize and build community for over 25 years in the United States. Some of these groups still exist, like Sakhi for South Asian Women, SALGA NYC, and the South Asian Womxn’s Creative Collective; while others, like Basement Bhangra, have ended (though DJ Rekha is still very much active). A number of new communities and platforms have cropped up since, including Equality Labs, the South Asian Diaspora Artists Collective, the Bangladeshi Feminist Collective, the Asian American Feminist Collective, @collective.sl.si (Sri Lankan-Staten Island Collective) and @SouthAsia.art.
I am looking forward to seeing how self-identified South Asian artists will form new, intersectional spaces and communities in the future, and to seeing how these communities take on the issues of their day, as well as the long-persisting systemic ones. It is exciting to see that artist communities in South Asia and in the diaspora are more closely connected than ever before thanks to technology and it has been inspiring to see the various acts and expressions of solidarity across the globe during the recent Shaheen Bagh protests, the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protests, and the Farmers’ protests in India.
Over the last year, I have been moved by the practice of mutual aid and I would like to name a few mutual aid groups that South Asian artists and practitioners are involved in: Bronx Mutual Aid; Aid for Art Now; and a coffee shop and community space near me in Bed Stuy, Playground Coffee Shop.