Touching on Caste: Godhadi, Shivani Patel & Aaliah Qureshi
June 21 - July 27 2024
Launch event & opening ritual / performances: June 20, 6 - 8pm
Free & open to all
Composite image of Touching on Caste research documentation. Images courtesy of the artists.
Touching on Caste is a group exhibition that convenes three anti-caste artistic perspectives from the South Asian diaspora: Godhadi, Shivani Patel and Aaliah Qureshi. Having met as members of A Particular Reality – a network of art students and educators dedicated to alternative and anti-racist pedagogies – they have since developed their respective questions related to their disparate caste positionalities. From reckoning with dalit ancestral knowledges (Godhadi) to rematerialising memories stored in caste-based materials (Shivani) and Muslim-inflected fables (Aaliah), Touching on Caste presents the complex and multitudinal experiences of caste beyond South Asia. We are delighted to present an opening ritual of two acts to launch the project on Thu 20 June, featuring a performance by Abhaya Rajani of the collective Godhadi and a reading by Aaliah Qureshi.
We are also going to be selling a zine publication containing the learning and reflections from the project, with contributions from all three artists.
Godhadi is an inter-generational collective hosted by Abhaya Rajani, a London-based dalit queer feminist artist along with the India-based artists, Rajani Kadam, the late Satyawati Kadam, and the late Sugandha Kadam. Through dalit lineage and our work which was considered womanly duties, we are dreaming to reimagine our labour in a contemporary art context. We are invested in constructing spaces through our collective transdisciplinary practices of making, cooking and performing to resist centuries-old oppressive injustices of Brahminical patriarchy.
Shivani Patel: ‘I am a British South Asian artist and within my practice, I investigate themes of cultural heritage, diaspora and dual identity. As a recent graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University, I hope my work sparks conversations regarding these themes, bringing an awareness and accuracy to South Asian beliefs within western settings.’
Aaliah Qureshi is a Pakistani visual artist working between tactile and digital media to unpick the relationship between herself and her identity. Combining sensory elements like touch and sound with photography and text, Aaliah explores themes related to memory, loss, and materiality.
