"I think sometimes of that black and white historic photograph of 100 people giving a Nazi salute, except one person," the artist told Hyperallergic. "I think that's me."
"who could only see me as an extension of her own very shameful self."
"At the gallery entrance, a five-foot-tall (~1.2-meter-tall) sculpture of her mother as a blue-skinned goddess shows her holding a severed head that is meant to be the artist's own."
Pyaari Azaadi produced over 200 pieces including wall-sized multimedia paintings, life-sized and miniature sculptures, photographs of Desi queer nightlife from 1990s New York City, and performance video installations. The works foreground relationships within the South Asian diaspora, centering tender and fraught family bonds and collaborations with artists, writers, activists, and organizers. A five-foot sculpture depicts a blue-skinned goddess modeled on Azaadi's mother holding a severed head meant to represent the artist. A wall painting renders three generations of women sticking out blackened tongues to signify intergenerational trauma transmitted through words. The survey emphasizes community labor, visibility struggles, and diasporic memory.
Read at Hyperallergic
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