I am a researcher + embodiment?performance?acting?artist who thinks about + responds to contemporary cultures of teaching / learning / knowledge sharing, and their entanglements with colonial hegemony, trauma, and inheritance, and more recently, their ties to hate violence, by questioning systems + developing tools to encourage questioning.
This website builds directly off the website of my friend/mentor/beloved community member, Emma Werowinski.
I'm currently researching...
organizing ecosystems, transnational solidarity, anti-colonial resistance, labor-related violence, inherited trauma...
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Writing
Ongoing
I regularly produce pieces for SAALT that reflect on issues of caste, immigration, hate violence, and queerness as they relate to the South Asian American diaspora.
View a fact sheet and zine I made that provides an overview of trends in South Asian migration along the U.S. Southern Border here.
View a Campus Workshop Guide I made on combating Islamophobia and hate in college spaces here.
View my pieces reporting on hate incidents rooted in Islamophobia and xenophobia in the U.S. here.
View a piece I made providing key information from a July 9 decision affecting international students with visas here.
View our report and research mapping the disparate impact of COVID-19 on South Asian communities across the United States here as a map, here as a report, or here as a series of video testimonials.
To see my editorial work, read SAALT's blog, Voices from the Community, here.
August 2019
This report details research conducted on the Center for Complexity regarding its relationship to racial justice movements happening within its parent community at the Rhode Island School of Design.
View this document here.
May 2019
This digital publication documents my year-long thesis endeavor to study my relationship to labor and productivity within the postcolonial contexts of my university community. Looking at the effects of hegemonic systems on my relationships with people, environments, and the objects that bring the two together, I use this collection of actions, performances, and portraits to construct a subjective and semi-biographical narrative concerning labor politics within maker/artist/designer workspaces.
View my thesis here.
December 2018
View Vol. XX Issue I & older editions here.
March 2018
What does it mean to bring the language of the internet into academic settings – especially when dealing with discussions on identity? In response to a professor (and class) that used colonial and xenophobic ideas to teach design, I delivered a guerrilla lecture about the value of imagery, humor, and respect to contrast the professor's own blasé treatment of neocolonialist and anti-Native structural violence.
Read the article here. The lecture's supplemental materials are available upon request.
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Research
Ongoing
At SAALT, I help research strategies and issues for advocacy (both in grassroots and political spaces) reflecting on issues of caste, immigration, hate violence, Islamophobia, and queerness as they relate to the South Asian American diaspora.
View our reports on acts of hate here, and read coverage of my research at SAALT by Nitish Pahwa at Slate here. Find more media coverage of my work at the bottom of this webpage.
View SAALT's report, "Unequal Consequences", on the impact of coronavirus on South Asian Americans here as a map, here as a report, or here as a series of video testimonials. The report is also published in Volume 31 (2021) of the Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, available here for purchase.
Ongoing
Alongside Alliah George, Angeles Fitzpatrick, Danyele Brown, and Eric Padró, I am studying the role of arts institutions in building sustainable communities within Dia Art Foundation's Education Department. More information on our research is available upon request.
March 2019 - December 2019
This publication, designed by Maddie Woods and put forth by the Center for Complexity, documents the research and analysis of Charlotte Clement, Tim Maly and myself at a convening led by PopTech.
View Maddie's compilation of our findings here.
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Making
Ongoing
Lacing, Grids + Kitchen 'Craft'
I'm in the middle of digesting + figuring out a project that involves lace-making, netting, map-making, and the crafts involved in cooking/growing/farming/eating. Its fruits are yet to be determined, but will likely delve into themes of 'masculinity', 'ownership', environmental occupation, inheritance, etc.
See pictures of the lacing & grids I'm working on here. See pictures of the food I've been making here.
Ongoing
This is an on-going labor/resource exchange system that attempts to rebalance understandings of different forms of productivity (physical, mental, emotional).
Its first iteration took place at the Rhode Island School of Design between 2018 and 2019, and is a part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio".
You can view the zine that documents my work with the Department of Furniture Design and the class of 2019 here.
You can visit my collaborators' webpages below:
clayton cottingham adam hunt fertig
becca ford anya gupta
makoto kumasaka marc librizzi
adrienne may jacob miller
max pratt monel reina
alicia wang soo joo
valeria buttaci rincon tom caycedo
dan cha kira dekhayser
haojun 'frank' gong sisi zhang
bea mandel rowan mccallister
jon ng elena ralls
rowan shaw-jones lotte walworth
irene wei yuning 'ruby' zhu
The second iteration took place at the Center for Complexity, and was titled Slumber Party. Its primary documentation is not available without direct inquiry to all participants, whose emails are as follows:
Eury Kim
Sophie Engel
Madeline Woods mwoods@risd.edu
Charlotte Clement
Irina Wang
S Suryanarayanan
Its secondary documentation, in the form of the reasoning provided for the Center for Complexity to 'allow' this event, is available here.
The third iteration, known as Filed Work, is an ongoing project at Dia Art Foundation, that aims to unpack the relationships between arts institutions, anti-institutional artists, and their inherent coexistence.
It was originally scheduled to culminate in July 2020; due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Filed Work has been indefinitely postponed.
May 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
box & lid is the final piece in the series "artifacts 314-520", & addresses questions of labor and productivity, packaging them in a circular and self-referential moment where each relies on the other to be discussed or even exist.
See pictures of box & lid here.
May 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
The Big Tarlatan is the last soft ground intaglio etching in the series "artifacts 314-520" and examines the realities of continuing one's own creative practice while still working as a part-time studio assistant for my peers.
See pictures of The Big Tarlatan here.
March 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
artifacts 103-201 is a collection of miniature soft ground intaglio etchings that use tarlatan to materially map the movements of makers in the studio. It builds on the language of its predecessor, mold friend (below), examining the elements of physical studio spaces that encourage and support healthy maker practices.
See pictures of artifacts 103-201 here.
January 2019
This is a combination of intaglio prints and graphite drawings which explore the relationship between the pipes of construction, innards, and systems of thinking. The intaglio prints exaggerate the relationship of the understructure of the chair, Mold Friend, whose portraits are on the right of the prints.
Each print and drawing is named for/after its recipient -- thus, there are no 'unclaimed' or 'lonely' Pipes [4].
See in-progress pictures of Pipes 4 Mold Friend, Harry, Marc, and Anya here.
December 2018
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
An exhibition of how labor can both be beautiful and capable of deteriorating over time, mold friend is an autobiographical timestamp of its making process, a transparent reflection of my maker instincts -- as well as a representation of how one can leave emotional unstable work environments and create safe havens of one's own.
Meet mold friend here.
May 2018
Fifi is a metal portrait, brought to life from Bahman Mohasses's drawings of the same character, "howling with happiness" -- and from my own reimaginations of Fifi (below).
See Fifi with her with her friends here.
March 2018
Bear Trap
Bear Trap is a pedagogical exercise and sculpture, developed specifically to augment Tyler Inman's curricular practice.
December 2017
Built by hand, Bentwood Sled / Sehnsucht is carefully tended to since conception, remaining with its owner until it is worn down; thus it is an ongoing project awaiting its 'completion'.
View pictures of Bentwood Sled / Sehnsucht here.
November 2017
Inspired by Bahman Mohasses's Fifi Howls with Happiness, this series presents a mixed-media exploration of his void of a figure. Fifi has since become an extension with which to simultaneously bring together my multiple selves (who may not always see one another...).
See my portraits of Fifi here.
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May 2021
currently:
research & communications @ saalt
education fellow @ dia art foundation
design fellow @ center for conscious design
previously:
labyrinth books, bookseller + events
center for complexity, social equity researcher
dance/nyc, justice programs asst
visions magazine, co-editor in chief
risd, community engagement coordinator
bruce high quality foundation university, summer asst
providence children's museum, programs fellow
chitra ganesh studio, web asst
resume here
coverage of my work with saalt:
in Huffington Post here
in Today here
in The Guardian here
in The Atlantic here
in NBC here
in Slate here
in Scroll.IN here
in CNN here
