Productive Failure: Writing Queer transnational South Asian art histories

290 Pages·2017·32.41 MB·English

by  Alpesh Kantilal Patel

Productive failure
Writing queer transnational
South Asian art histories
Alpesh Kantilal Patel

Productive failure
SERIES EDITORS
Amelia G. Jones, Marsha Meskimmon
Rethinking Art’s Histories aims to open out art history from its most basic structures
by foregrounding work that challenges the conventional periodisation and
geographical subfields of traditional art history, and addressing a wide range of
visual cultural forms from the early modern period to the present.
These books will acknowledge the impact of recent scholarship on our
understanding of the complex temporalities and cartographies that have emerged
through centuries of world-wide trade, political colonisation and the diasporic
movement of people and ideas across national and continental borders.
Also available in the series Women, the arts and globalization:
Eccentric experience Marsha
Art, museums and touch Fiona Candlin
Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe (eds)
The ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork: Participation
Flesh cinema: The corporeal turn in
from fluxus to relational aesthetics Anna
American avant-garde film Ara
Dezeuze (ed.)
Osterweil
Fleshing out surfaces: Skin in French art
After-affects|after-images: Trauma and
and medicine, 1650–1850 Mechthild
aesthetic transformation in the virtual
Fend
feminist museum Griselda Pollock
The political aesthetics of the Armenian
Vertiginous mirrors: The animation of the
avant-garde: The journey of the ‘painterly
visual image and early modern
real’, 1987–2004 Angela Harutyunyan
travel Rose Marie San Juan
The matter of miracles: Neapolitan
The paradox of body, building and motion
baroque sanctity and architecture
in seventeenth-century
Helen Hills
England Kimberley Skelton
The face of medicine: Visualising medical
The newspaper clipping: A modern paper
masculinities in late nineteenth-century
object Anke Te Heesen, translated by
Paris Mary Hunter
Lori Lantz
Glorious catastrophe: Jack Smith,
Screen/space: The projected image in
performance and visual culture Dominic
contemporary art Tamara Trodd (ed.)
Johnson
Art and human rights: Contemporary
Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art
Asian contexts Caroline Turner and Jen
histories Amelia Jones and Erin Silver
Webb
(eds)
Timed out: Art and the transnational
Photography and documentary film in the
Caribbean Leon Wainwright
making of modern Brazil Luciana
Martins Performative monuments: The
rematerialisation of public art Mechtild
After the event: New perspectives in art
Widrich
history Charles Merewether and John
Potts (eds)
Productive failure
Writing queer transnational South Asian art histories
Alpesh Kantilal Patel
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Alpesh Kantilal Patel 2017
The right of Alpesh Kantilal Patel to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 1 7849 9254 5 hardback
First published 2017
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate.
Typeset
by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Contents
List of plates page vii
List of figures xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xxi
1
Introduction: towards creolizing transnational South Asian
art histories 1
2
Authorship: Anish Kapoor as British/Asian/artist 21
3
Form: queer zen 39
4
Subject matter: writing as a racial pharmakon 77
5
Space/site: writing queer feminist transnational South Asian
art histories 109
6
‘Practice-led’: producing art, producing art history 151
7
Affect: belonging 187
Afterword 211
Bibliography 215
Index 241

Plates
1 Anish Kapoor, 1000 Names, 1979–80. Wood, gesso and pigment,
dimensions variable. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
AD00005. © Anish Kapoor.
2 Cy Twombly, Ferragosto II, 1961. Oil, oil crayon and pencil on canvas,
64¾ × 78⅞ in. (164.5 × 200.3 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Gift of Joseph H.
Hirshhorn, 1966. Photography by Lee Stalsworth. © Cy Twombly
Foundation.
3 Natvar Bhavsar, VAATRI, 1969. Pigment, oil and acrylic on canvas,
108 × 192 in. Photo: Janet Brosious Bhavsar. © Natvar Bhavsar.
4 Natvar Bhavsar, THEER-A-THEER-A, 1969. Pure pigment, oil and acrylic
on canvas, 81.5 × 360 in. Photo: Alessandro Allegrini. © Natvar Bhavsar.
5 Stephen Dean, Stills from Pulse, 2001. Video installation, sound, 7:20
min. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2002. 140 ©
Stephen Dean.
6 Mario Pfeifer, A Formal Film in Nine Episodes, Prologue & Epilogue,
2010. 35 mm film transferred to HD video; stereo, 52 min; multiple
projections for exhibition space (variable). Hindi, Tamil with English
subtitles. Courtesy of Mario Pfeifer & [blackboardfilms], © 2012.
Installation view: MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am
Main 2012–13.
7 Adrian Piper, The Color Wheel Series, Second Adhyasa:
Pranamayakosha II. 102 (Adrian Piper) (7/31/01). 8.25 × 10 in., 600 dpi.
Pantone #5767 CVC, 287 CVC, 1385 CVC. Photo: Maurice Berger.
Detail of page project for Art Journal 60, 3 (2001). © Adrian Piper
Research Archive Foundation Berlin.
8 Kehinde Wiley, Femme Fellah, 2010. Oil on canvas, 45 × 36 in.
© Kehinde Wiley.
9 Kehinde Wiley, Bonaparte in the Great Mosque of Cairo, 2010. Oil on
canvas, 60 × 72 in. © Kehinde Wiley.
viii List of plates
10 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
11 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
12 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
13 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
14 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
15 Sphere, Sphere:dreamz, Sackville Park, Manchester, England, Spring
2006. © Sphere.
16 Photos of walk down Curry Mile, Manchester, England, 2007. Photos
© Alpesh Kantilal Patel.
17 Painting installed in Shahenshah restaurant. Manchester, England,
2008. Photo © Alpesh Kantilal Patel.
18 Sphere, Bed placed in Sangam Restaurant, Manchester, England,
October 2007. Commissioned for the exhibition Mixing It Up: Queering
Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street (organizer: Alpesh Kantilal Patel;
producers: Jaheda Choudhury, Lisa Beauchamp and Alpesh Kantilal
Patel). © Sphere; Mixing It Up © Alpesh Kantilal Patel.
19 Sphere, Detail of Sphere:dreamz installation, Whitworth Art Gallery,
The University of Manchester, Manchester, England, October 2007.
Commissioned for the exhibition Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile
and Currying Canal Street (organizer: Alpesh Kantilal Patel; producers:
Jaheda Choudhury, Lisa Beauchamp and Alpesh Kantilal Patel).
© Sphere; Mixing It Up © Alpesh Kantilal Patel.
20 Sphere, Organza screens from bed frames of Sphere:dreamz re-sited to
Cornerhouse, Manchester, England, September–November 2007.
Commissioned for the exhibition Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile
and Currying Canal Street (organizer: Alpesh Kantilal Patel; producers:
Jaheda Choudhury, Lisa Beauchamp and Alpesh Kantilal Patel). ©
Sphere; Mixing It Up © Alpesh Kantilal Patel.
21 Sphere, Untitled (wall mural), Cornerhouse, Manchester, England,
September–November 2007. Commissioned for the exhibition Mixing
It Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street (organizer:
Alpesh Kantilal Patel; producers: Jaheda Choudhury, Lisa Beauchamp
and Alpesh Kantilal Patel). © Sphere; Mixing It Up © Alpesh Kantilal
Patel.
22 Paul Stanley, Generosity Cake Project, Sangam Restaurant, Manchester,
England, 2007 (end of Ramadan). Commissioned for the exhibition
Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street.