Natasha Bissonauth | York University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Natasha Bissonauth
Spirale : arts • lettres • sciences humaines, 2021
"Quit, India. (2013) Published in collaboration with Artspeak in Vancouver, QUIT, INDIA., do... more "Quit, India. (2013) Published in collaboration with Artspeak in Vancouver, QUIT, INDIA., documents and elaborates upon Divya Mehra’s two recent solo exhibitions at Canadian Artist Run Centres: Turf War presented at PLATFORM in 2010 and The Party is Over, presented at Artspeak (Vancouver) in 2011." -- Publisher's website
Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 2021
Photography and Culture, 2014
This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. ... more This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. Despite colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideologies that have imaged her community of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people as invisible citizens of a larger society and hypervisible deviant outsiders of that same collective, Muholi's photographs attempt to shift the conventions of the gaze. Drawing on Ariella Azoulay's photography theory and Jill Bennett's affect theory for art, I argue that Muholi's photographs bring forth an affective appeal to act. Azoulay's notions of "citizenship" and the "civil contract of photography" call on photography's responsibility to act on behalf of those depicted in images of atrocities. Bennett's "empathic vision" describes a relational perception of art, where one is affectively struck by the visual imagery. Reading Azoulay's political, ethical vision and Bennett's embodied methodology for visual culture together, I suggest that Muholi's practice moves her audience to see differently-where seeing the photographed in and of itself becomes an act of political restoration.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
Sa'dia Rehman's Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Quee... more Sa'dia Rehman's Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Queens Museum of Art in New York during the 2005 Fatal Love show, the first exhibition on South Asian American art in a major venue. Given its unusual placement outside the white cube, one's encounter with Lotah Stories is jarring. Moreover, Rehman's crass subject matter incites carnivalesque laughter. This article argues that Rehman's aesthetics give form to the dissent of play; by situating Rehman within the age of identity art and the emergence of South Asian diasporic art from the 1990s onwards, I maintain that attention to play as a political aesthetic can reshape the way we see difference.
Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, 2020
This chapter compares two exhibitions that engage permanent collections, Eyes of Time (Brooklyn M... more This chapter compares two exhibitions that engage permanent collections, Eyes of Time (Brooklyn Museum of Art) and The Scorpion Gesture, at the Rubin Museum. I argue that Chitra Ganesh's contemporary art comprise of ephemeral interventions within permanent displays and these aesthetic interactions have to the capacity to shift the colonial notion of time anchoring art display. Ganesh accomplishes this in particular through a science fictional aesthetic that she superimposes onto museum objects mired in mythology.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
Sa’dia Rehman’s Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Quee... more Sa’dia Rehman’s Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Queens Museum of Art in New York during the 2005 Fatal Love show, the first exhibition on South Asian American art in a major venue. Given its unusual placement outside the white cube, one’s encounter with Lotah Stories is jarring. Moreover, Rehman’s crass subject matter incites carnivalesque laughter. This article argues that Rehman’s aesthetics give form to the dissent of play; by situating Rehman within the age of identity art and the emergence of South Asian diasporic art from the 1990s onwards, I maintain that attention to play as a political aesthetic can reshape the way we see difference.
Art Journal, 2019
This article looks at the photos of London-based artist, Sunil Gupta to endorse a queer of color ... more This article looks at the photos of London-based artist, Sunil Gupta to endorse a queer of color critique of camp. By analyzing how staged photography in an orientalized bathhouse in Paris, I study the racial codedness of gay male desire.
Photography & Culture, 2014
This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. ... more This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. Despite colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideologies that have imaged her community of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people as invisible citizens of a larger society and hypervisible deviant outsiders of that same collective, Muholi's photographs attempt to shift the conventions of the gaze. Drawing on Ariella Azoulay's photography theory and Jill Bennett's affect theory for art, I argue that Muholi's photographs bring forth an affective appeal to act. Azoulay's notions of "citizenship" and the "civil contract of photography" call on photography's responsibility to act on behalf of those depicted in images of atrocities. Bennett's "empathic vision" describes a relational perception of art, where one is affectively struck by the visual imagery. Reading Azoulay's political, ethical vision and Bennett's embodied methodology for visual culture together, I suggest that Muholi's practice moves her audience to see differently-where seeing the photographed in and of itself becomes an act of political restoration.
Spirale : arts • lettres • sciences humaines, 2021
"Quit, India. (2013) Published in collaboration with Artspeak in Vancouver, QUIT, INDIA., do... more "Quit, India. (2013) Published in collaboration with Artspeak in Vancouver, QUIT, INDIA., documents and elaborates upon Divya Mehra’s two recent solo exhibitions at Canadian Artist Run Centres: Turf War presented at PLATFORM in 2010 and The Party is Over, presented at Artspeak (Vancouver) in 2011." -- Publisher's website
Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 2021
Photography and Culture, 2014
This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. ... more This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. Despite colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideologies that have imaged her community of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people as invisible citizens of a larger society and hypervisible deviant outsiders of that same collective, Muholi's photographs attempt to shift the conventions of the gaze. Drawing on Ariella Azoulay's photography theory and Jill Bennett's affect theory for art, I argue that Muholi's photographs bring forth an affective appeal to act. Azoulay's notions of "citizenship" and the "civil contract of photography" call on photography's responsibility to act on behalf of those depicted in images of atrocities. Bennett's "empathic vision" describes a relational perception of art, where one is affectively struck by the visual imagery. Reading Azoulay's political, ethical vision and Bennett's embodied methodology for visual culture together, I suggest that Muholi's practice moves her audience to see differently-where seeing the photographed in and of itself becomes an act of political restoration.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
Sa'dia Rehman's Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Quee... more Sa'dia Rehman's Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Queens Museum of Art in New York during the 2005 Fatal Love show, the first exhibition on South Asian American art in a major venue. Given its unusual placement outside the white cube, one's encounter with Lotah Stories is jarring. Moreover, Rehman's crass subject matter incites carnivalesque laughter. This article argues that Rehman's aesthetics give form to the dissent of play; by situating Rehman within the age of identity art and the emergence of South Asian diasporic art from the 1990s onwards, I maintain that attention to play as a political aesthetic can reshape the way we see difference.
Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism, 2020
This chapter compares two exhibitions that engage permanent collections, Eyes of Time (Brooklyn M... more This chapter compares two exhibitions that engage permanent collections, Eyes of Time (Brooklyn Museum of Art) and The Scorpion Gesture, at the Rubin Museum. I argue that Chitra Ganesh's contemporary art comprise of ephemeral interventions within permanent displays and these aesthetic interactions have to the capacity to shift the colonial notion of time anchoring art display. Ganesh accomplishes this in particular through a science fictional aesthetic that she superimposes onto museum objects mired in mythology.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020
Sa’dia Rehman’s Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Quee... more Sa’dia Rehman’s Lotah Stories was an art installation that was exhibited in the bathrooms of Queens Museum of Art in New York during the 2005 Fatal Love show, the first exhibition on South Asian American art in a major venue. Given its unusual placement outside the white cube, one’s encounter with Lotah Stories is jarring. Moreover, Rehman’s crass subject matter incites carnivalesque laughter. This article argues that Rehman’s aesthetics give form to the dissent of play; by situating Rehman within the age of identity art and the emergence of South Asian diasporic art from the 1990s onwards, I maintain that attention to play as a political aesthetic can reshape the way we see difference.
Art Journal, 2019
This article looks at the photos of London-based artist, Sunil Gupta to endorse a queer of color ... more This article looks at the photos of London-based artist, Sunil Gupta to endorse a queer of color critique of camp. By analyzing how staged photography in an orientalized bathhouse in Paris, I study the racial codedness of gay male desire.
Photography & Culture, 2014
This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. ... more This article provides a theoretical framing for Zanele Muholi's visual activism in South Africa. Despite colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal ideologies that have imaged her community of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people as invisible citizens of a larger society and hypervisible deviant outsiders of that same collective, Muholi's photographs attempt to shift the conventions of the gaze. Drawing on Ariella Azoulay's photography theory and Jill Bennett's affect theory for art, I argue that Muholi's photographs bring forth an affective appeal to act. Azoulay's notions of "citizenship" and the "civil contract of photography" call on photography's responsibility to act on behalf of those depicted in images of atrocities. Bennett's "empathic vision" describes a relational perception of art, where one is affectively struck by the visual imagery. Reading Azoulay's political, ethical vision and Bennett's embodied methodology for visual culture together, I suggest that Muholi's practice moves her audience to see differently-where seeing the photographed in and of itself becomes an act of political restoration.