Mõaj

BFA Honors Thesis

The Kashmiri Pandit Genocide of 1990 is one of the most “succesful” yet least known ethnic cleansings. On January 19, 1990, countless Hindu homes were looted, families were murdered, and women were raped. My mother recalls the message that the militants played over mosque speakers that night: that Pandits were openly ordered to convert to Islam, leave Kashmir, or die. They said they would rape the Hindu women, and told the men to leave them behind.
In many cultures, the earth has always been gendered as a woman. Language surrounding the earth such as “fertile” and “mother nature” reinforce this notion, and the same metaphors are present in the Kashmiri language. Potent language like this serves as a way of objectifying the earth in a similar way to women. Similar language is found in the fracking industries. The word fracking itself is polysemous, and also means to engage in sexual intercourse. Other terms in the fracking industry such as force, extract, and drill invoke a rape of the earth. In this way, land can be seen as an object to conquer, own, and confine. Just as the militants were conquering the land in Kashmir, they also wanted to conquer the women of that land. The land and the women were objects that needed to be possessed. With the narrative of the land as gendered, which permits violence against both the land and women, and the connected conflict in Kashmir, the use of women’s fabric that has been an essential link to my matrilineage also functions to highlight the sexual violence committed against the Kashmiri Pandit women. However, by placing the fabric over the land, it reclaims the narrative as the fabric extends past the confines of the land and defines its own space.
By being physically separated from my ancestral home and forced to assimilate into American culture, my art is an act of resistance and reconnection. Mõaj defines the void that exists with the physical land and psychological idea of Kashmir, and restricts access to other parts of the room. This inaccesibility is related to an inability to return to Kashmir, even as the land exists now.
The topography of the Himalayan Mountains surrounding Kashmir was used to form the peaks under the fabric.The process I used in my work to make the structure embodies these ideas. Pliable steel holds the forms it is shaped into, but also carries with it the memory of what it once was. Even if it is straightened again, there is a retained memory of the ways in which it was bent and the things it experienced. Similarly, my body holds onto the practices of sewing and manipulating traditional Indian clothing from my ancestors. This clothing, covering the metal skeleton of the work, are pre owned garments belonging to women who are close to me. They serve as a surrogate for an absent body.