Charan Singh: What would my father think?
© Charan Singh - Courtesy the artist and SepiaEye, New York © Charan Singh, 2022
As an artist / photographer what do you question through your work and why?
“The modes of knowledge production and aesthetic norms of revelation that colonial photographs produce still dominate contemporary image-making practices. These colonial and neocolonial modes of knowledge and photographic discourse often emphasised the precarity of people in societies to formulate them as the perpetual other. My practice uses the mediums of photography, video and text to explore my 'pre-English language' life to create artistic resistance through storytelling and fictional fragments to express multi-layered gender experiences and the ephemeral nature of queer desire.”
>> View exhibition What would my father think?
What would my father think?
How do we forge an archive of feelings and desires that were not allowed to exist. These self-portraits are a reconstruction of the past that is now being seen through the prism of queerness. They are insprired by the early 20th century photographs of men-together to invoke a sense of a gone by time. While exploring the notions of family which reference to biological relations between people they specifically question of a family unit that generally consist of two people of opposite sex, and their home becomes a geographical locations that they inhabit. If one did not rely on lineage then what would be the alternative be to this fundamental question of “family”? This work begins to develop a queer methodology that poses a challenge to the notions of biology and belonging which impede our worldview, if they remain unquestioned.
About Charan Singh
Charan Singh’s (b. 1978, India) finished his practice-led PhD at the Royal College of Art. His research and practice are informed by his involvement with HIV/AIDS work and community activism, which uses the mediums of photography, video and text to explore his 'pre-English language' life to create artistic resistance through storytelling and fictional fragments to express multi-layered gender experiences and the ephemeral nature of queer desire. His work reclaims subaltern queer identities, sub-cultures that have been defined mainly as victims. While refusing to form of subjugation it investigates the institutionalised modes of knowledge productions that are stained with colonial past and are being overshadowed by neo-colonial narratives in India.
Charan Singh: http://www.charansingh.net
>> View exhibition What would my father think?