The Boy Who Belonged: Jangarh-Kalam as a Site of Meshwork
Publication information:
Abstract
This paper challenges celebratory narratives of inclusion that frame indigenous artist Jangarh Singh Shyam’s emergence as a simple expansion of the contemporary art canon. Instead, it situates Jangarh-Kalam (the school of art he propagated) within the longer histories of colonial extraction and the commodifying logics of the global art market on the one hand and exclusionary social practices on the other hand, where indigenous practices are rendered legible through demands for individuation, permanence, authorship, and right to belong. What circulates globally is not the Pardhan practice in its relational fullness, but a partial form shaped by asymmetries of power. Against these conditions, Jangarh’s Pandavani Katha paintings resist singular, legible form by sustaining relational complexity. Through the methodological intervention of meshwork, this paper will be a site where various structural and artistic entanglements are explored.
Presenter Biography
Sanskriti Chattopadhyay is a doctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg, on decolonial possibilities of cinematic image. She has two post-graduate degrees in Film Direction and Screenplay Writing, and Literary and Cultural Studies. She has presented papers on artistic practices through the lens of postcolonial expression, Alternative spiritualities, Literary studies, cinema studies.