Articulating Resistance
The disciplinary understandings of contemporary Indian art are being challenged in our time by experiences, narratives and strategies designated as activism. Articulating Resistance: Art and Activism explores this space between art and activism without letting the discourse being reduced either to a simple formulation about art in activism or activism in art. The focus, instead, is on interrogating the politics of aesthetics as well as the connections between the visual and other disciplines. Deriving its insights from methodological moves made in the fields of art history/criticism, culture studies and visual culture, the book foregrounds the links between the practice of art and the urgencies of the public world trying to bridge, in the process, the space that reaches across the academy and all that is known as activism in our time. The different sections in the book explore the complex relationship between art-producing practices and frameworks of viewing that seek alignment with the various struggles around caste, community, gender and sexuality.

“The book describes how censorship, vandalism and resistance have played out in the university, with students, artists and faculty ranged against the right wing and an increasingly partisan university administration. Contributing authors seek to describe the dynamic relationship between art and activism and also tackle shifts in contemporary arts practice, particularly in the last three decades. Articulating Resistance also considers questions of class, caste, gender, community and sexual orientation as the basis for an analysis of arts practices making for a politically sharp reading of conventional art history.”
Devina Dutt, The Caravan