Our bodies, our worlds, are resonant with signs of others. The signs of those who constrain us but also signs of those who share their transformations and liberations with us.
In this public event, artists Reetu Sattar (Jan van Eyck Academie) and Rajyashri Goody (Rijksakademie) share their ongoing work and practice at the intersection of political violence, social constraint, solidarity and poetic transformation. Their work, traversing performance, photography, film, and writing, intervenes powerfully and evocatively in the material and ideological fabrics of our shared worlds. Tactility is central to the intermedial bodies of work of both Sattar and Goody as they viscerally intervene in and challenge the systems of signification that undergird imperial, gendered, colonial, and religious oppression in India and Bangladesh. This event provides an engagement with the work of these two established South Asian artists currently in residence in The Netherlands. Dr. Sanjukta Sunderason (Art History, University of Amsterdam) responds to the historical flourishing of artistic practices across the South Asia region in the face of violent populism and renewed authoritarianisms.
This event is made possible by NIAS, Rijksakademie and the British Academy.
Programme
13:00-13:05 – Introduction, Lotte Hoek (moderator, NIAS/University of Edinburgh)
13:05-13:20 – Reetu Sattar (Jan van Eyck Academie)
13:20-13:35 – Rajyashri Goody (Rijksacademie)
13:35-13:45 – Sanjukta Sunderason (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
13:45-14:30 – Public Discussion and Q&A
Bio’s
Reetu Sattar is an artist and film maker, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her practice, both performative and experimental in nature, questions human perception and imperceptible nature by re-examining history and creation of knowledge.In a constant dialogue with immediate surroundings, her work engages with the poetics of environments and explores inner urges for change, perception, (re)relation to body and matter.‘Shabnam’, her most recent work, addresses the fragmented history of the fabrication of muslin and its scattered documentation across archives all over the world. The film premiered at the last edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Sattar is currently artist-in-residence at the Jan Van EyckAcademie in Maastricht.
Rajyashri Goody is from Pune, India. Her art practice explores everyday and historic instances of Dalit resistance. She is interested in creating space and time for thinking through these themes, and incorporates reading, writing, ceramics, photography, printmaking, and installation in the hope that these mediums enable further conversations about caste and hierarchies.Goody is currently an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam.