welcome to what we took from is the state

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March 12–April 2, 2016

The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) is pleased to present its annual visual arts exhibition, welcome to what we took from is the state, guest curated by Sadia Shirazi at the Queens Museum.

Queens Museum
Partnership Gallery
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows, Corona Park
Queens, New York

Events
March 12, 2016
4-6pm: Opening reception

April 2, 2016
2-4pm: Closing reception

Guest curated by Sadia Shirazi

Participating Artists:

Anushya Badrinath
Chitra Ganesh
Mariam Ghani
Sue Jeong Ka
Ayesha Kamal Khan
Raja’a Khalid
Ayqa Khan, Fariha Róisín, and Nafisa Kaptownwala
Gelare Khoshgozaran
Umber Majeed
Huma Mujli
Ayesha Sultana

The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) formed in the late 1990’s, before 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the ongoing US-led “Global War on Terror.” Between the organization’s founding and the present moment, the ground of its community has shifted amid the geopolitics of endless war and the carceral politics of the state.

Operating in parallel to these wars waged by the state against those it deems terrorists, anti-nationals, and non-citizens, are the social, domestic, and commercial spaces—resistant “black sites”—that are the subjects of many of the artworks brought together in this exhibition. These other spaces are the resources referred to in the exhibition’s title—sites of nourishment, care, filial relation, and resistance. Through works that take many forms, including installation, photomontage, video, performance, and social sculpture, the artists in this exhibition ask how we might recalibrate our feelings in relation to one another under the pressure of forces that seek to weaken, diminish, and destroy the social bonds and debts that hold us together.

Taking its title from a passage in “The Feel Trio” by Fred Moten, “welcome to what we took from is the state” is interested in refusal more than representation, and gives a nod to all those hiding in plain sight, just out of view of the state.

Image credit: Chitra Ganesh, Her Nuclear Waters, 2013.

This exhibition is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.