{"id":4607,"date":"2022-05-02T22:36:43","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T22:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/curativeprojects.net\/?page_id=4607"},"modified":"2022-05-04T17:38:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T17:38:16","slug":"jaishri-abichandani-flower-headed-children","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/curativeprojects.net\/?page_id=4607","title":{"rendered":"Jaishri Abichandani: Flower-Headed Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The New York Times\u2019 Jillian Steinhauer<\/a> called Flower-Headed Children<\/em> \u201ca feminist vision of abundance\u201d<\/p>

Hyperallergic\u2019s Eva Recinos<\/a> said: \u201cThe show is a reminder that South Asian contemporary artists are ready to be heard, whether or not institutions want to catch up.\u201d<\/p>

The Art Newspaper<\/a> called Flower-Headed Children<\/em> “one of the best shows to see” during Frieze Week in Los Angeles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The work of Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Jaishri Abichandani responds to her experiences navigating her South Asian heritage and her identity as a woman of color, from immigrating to the United States from India as a teenager, to forging deep connections with anti-racist and feminist activist groups. Abichandani\u2019s painted portraits and imaginative sculptures celebrate feminist and queer bodies, taking their forms from Indian classical art, but their subjects come from contemporary South Asian diaspora culture and activism. While South Asians are increasingly visible in U.S. politics, this diverse population is divided by national, regional, religious, and caste differences, and externally marginalized by a national discourse on race that casts the community as perpetually foreign. For more than 25 years, Jaishri Abichandani has been building spaces where South Asian women, femmes, and queer people can meet in creative community. This has been her focus as a founder of South Asian Women\u2019s Creative Coalition in New York and London, as the inaugural Director of Public Events and Projects at the Queens Museum of Art, and as a Consulting Curator for the Ford Foundation Gallery, and it remains an important aspect of her visual art practice today.<\/p>\n

The exhibition includes Abichandani\u2019s ongoing portrait series, Jasmine Blooms at Night, now numbered at over 40 paintings and sculptures, which celebrates the contributions of South Asian women and femmes to 21st century culture and politics in the U.S. Also included are Abichandani\u2019s ornate sculptural works which emulate the lithe, elegant postures of Indian devotional art, appearing as gods, serene even in arduous postures. Forms from Hindu, Buddhist, and African art are often Abichandani\u2019s source material, while her subject matter comes from the inclusive and dynamic queer community that she builds around her art and activism, which extends from her home in Brooklyn to London, Toronto, Mumbai, and around the globe.<\/p>\n

South Asian aesthetics inform Abichandani\u2019s approach to art practice which is grounded in Rasa theory, a philosophy originating in medieval Sanskrit texts and re-popularized by Satyajit Ray and other Indian modernists that posits all art as an act of psychic and emotional transference between maker and audience. Using South Asian materials such as gold brocade or zari, silk, floral garlands, and costume jewelry, Abichandani\u2019s artworks vivify their environments to activate the global, feminist ramifications of Rasa theory and broaden American art audiences\u2019 appreciation of aesthetics that represent an unfamiliar cultural experience.<\/p>\n

The exhibition Jaishri Abichandani: Flower-Headed Children<\/em> was at the Craft Contemporary<\/a> in Los Angeles from January 29-May 8, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n

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