VISITING ARTIST: You Said It Wouldn’t Hurt:
Revisualizing History Through the Grotesque
Rajkamal Kahlon
Tuesday, May 8 / 5:00 PM / IV Theater 2
New York-based artist, Rajkamal Kahlon received her B.A. in Studio Art from the UC Davis (1996) and an M.F.A. in Painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts (1999). Drawing on diverse cultural sources (19th century illustrated books, painted backdrops, cut outs, and ethnographic photography), for a number of years Kahlon has been interrogating forms of colonial and racial authority in her dialectical engagement with historical texts. Painting over the actual pages of books, Kahlonís violent imagery, clashing colors, and singular emphasis on the human body turned grotesque in its traumatic encounters of colonialism, military rule, or torture, critiques the will to ëmakeÓí humans through visual practices backed by repressive regimes of power. Kahlonís new project, You said It Wouldnít Hurt: Revisualizing History Through the Grotesque, continues a series of gouache paintings that use illustrations in the 1200-page Cassell's Illustrated History of India (a colonial ethnography published in 1875) as her base. She will be presenting this work during her visit to UCSB.
Sponsored by the IHC Visiting Artists Program, Film and Media Studies, Art Department, English Department and the IHCís South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group
