Gallery 210: Thursday, 11 October 2012
Asma Kazmi: Playing Gender
October 11-December 1, 2012
A reception for the artist will be held October 11 from 5:30 PM and continuing to 7:30 PM. Ms. Kazmi will give a slide talk in the gallery auditorium starting at 6:15 PM.
Asma Kazmi¹s Playing Gender engages a subaltern section of modern Indian society‹cross-dressed biological men, eunuchs, or hermaphrodites, who are known traditionally as hijras. The hijras exist on the fringes of the Indian society, tolerated only in the specific roles of beggars, ritual performers, or homosexual prostitutes. They can be seen in drag, gathered for marriages and birth celebrations, singing and dancing to drums and claps, to songs from the latest popular films.
Kazmi spent the summer of 2009 working with three hijras in New Delhi, learning the conventions of gender parody. The culmination of her interactions with the hijras resulted in a performance in which the hijras had the sole agency for constructing scenarios that included both the artist and the hijras. This performance is captured on video and featured in the exhibition. Through photography, installation, drawing and video Ms. Kazmi probes the notion that gender derives from culture and not nature. As such, she sees its relationship to biological sex as a shifting, unstable space and not the firm ground it can seem to be.
Also on exhibit in Gallery B is UMSL Fine Art Faculty Jubilee and in Gallery C is Michael Gitlin¹s Dust Studies.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Gallery 210 is on the University of Missouri-St. Louis
44 East Drive, TCC between the North UM-St. Louis Metro Station and Touhill Performing Arts Center
(314) 516-5976
gallery@umsl.edu
http://gallery210.umsl.edu
October 11-December 1, 2012
A reception for the artist will be held October 11 from 5:30 PM and continuing to 7:30 PM. Ms. Kazmi will give a slide talk in the gallery auditorium starting at 6:15 PM.
Asma Kazmi¹s Playing Gender engages a subaltern section of modern Indian society‹cross-dressed biological men, eunuchs, or hermaphrodites, who are known traditionally as hijras. The hijras exist on the fringes of the Indian society, tolerated only in the specific roles of beggars, ritual performers, or homosexual prostitutes. They can be seen in drag, gathered for marriages and birth celebrations, singing and dancing to drums and claps, to songs from the latest popular films.
Kazmi spent the summer of 2009 working with three hijras in New Delhi, learning the conventions of gender parody. The culmination of her interactions with the hijras resulted in a performance in which the hijras had the sole agency for constructing scenarios that included both the artist and the hijras. This performance is captured on video and featured in the exhibition. Through photography, installation, drawing and video Ms. Kazmi probes the notion that gender derives from culture and not nature. As such, she sees its relationship to biological sex as a shifting, unstable space and not the firm ground it can seem to be.
Also on exhibit in Gallery B is UMSL Fine Art Faculty Jubilee and in Gallery C is Michael Gitlin¹s Dust Studies.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Gallery 210 is on the University of Missouri-St. Louis
44 East Drive, TCC between the North UM-St. Louis Metro Station and Touhill Performing Arts Center
(314) 516-5976
gallery@umsl.edu
http://gallery210.umsl.edu
posted by Bill Barrett at 1:05 PM
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