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Group shot: Jaishri
Abichandani creates
dozens of portraits and
sculptures of her fellow
South Asian-American
feminist activists to
highlight the rich diversity
of her underrepresented
community.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
About face Collection shows portraits of South Asian feminist activists
COURIER LIFE, A 24-7 PRIL 19-25, 2019 45
By Kevin Duggan She’s made a community collage!
A new exhibit will put a face on
New York’s community of South
Asian-American feminist activists. Artist
Jaishri Abichandani has produced more
than two dozen small-scale portraits of
her fellow rabble-rousers for her show
“Jasmine Blooms at Night,” opening at
Bric on April 24.
The show features 26 paintings and four
sculptures that celebrate her community’s
many different women and queer people
pushing for change, who are little-known
outside of activist circles, said the artist.
“They’re not going to be visible to people
outside of my community. We know
who they are, we know the work they’ve
done, we love them and appreciate them,”
said Abichandani.
The prominent display of activists
will also give South Asian Brooklynites
a chance to see their own modern history,
she said.
“The truth is, South Asians never get
to go and see paintings of people who are
living, breathing, making change amongst
them,” said the Clinton Hill artist.
Abichandani found her subjects from
friends she has encountered or been
inspired by during her decades-long career
of activism, which includes being a student
organizer during her college years
in Queens, rallying for pro-choice causes
in Washington, D.C., and founding arts
group the South Asian Women’s Creative
Collective in 1997.
Her Bric show highlights many Kings
County subjects, including immigrant
rights activists Thanu Yakupitiyage and
Rage Kidvai, and the Kensington founder
of the Bangladeshi Feminist Collective,
Shahana Hanif.
The project started a few years ago,
when she created little sculptures of activists
and friends she called “Angry Ladies.”
The elaborate, three-dimensional portraits
took a huge amount of time, so she switched
to painting portraits and decorating them
with jewelry and trinkets.
She has arranged the works according
to the different causes her subjects fight for
— right down to the shape of the pictures.
Her pictures of LGBTQ activists are on
triangular canvasses, referencing the pink
triangle logo of the AIDS advocacy group
Act Up.
The paintings themselves also hint at
the topic of their subject’s activism. For
instance, labor leader Bhairavi Desai is
portrayed against a yellow background,
referencing her work as a founding member
of the city’s cab driver’s union, while the
portrait of attorney Menaka Guruswamy,
who recently helped repeal the laws criminalizing
gay sex in India, features a small
set of weighing scales.
The queer activist scene of the 1990s
was an incubator for her own activism, and
for many of the subjects of Abichandani’s
paintings, she said.
“These organizations that were around
in the ’90s were crucial to my becoming an
activist. This is my way of acknowledging
who we are and the work that we’ve done to
shift social landscapes,” she said.
Abichandani’s is one of three exhibits
in the suite “The Portrait is Political” at
the Fulton Street art space, which also
includes photos from Brooklynite Texas
Isaiah, and a collection of portraits of
more than 35 queer Kings County artists,
curated by Liz Collins.
“The Portrait is Political” at Bric Gallery
647 Fulton St. at Rockwell Place in Fort
Greene, (718) 855–7882, www.bricartsmedia.
org. Opening reception April 24 at 7
p.m. On display through May 12. Free.
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