Jagdeep Raina
Region: MFA Annual
My studio practice is research-based, primarily drawn from the
archive. I consult the documents of pioneering communities in
the South Asian diaspora. The history of these communities exists
in overlooked materials: books, oral history manuscripts, VHS
tapes, records, and cassettes tucked away in cardboard boxes,
yellow photographs in peeling albums stuffed in cupboards and
shelves, in basements, on online databases, and in the research
of scholars who have dedicated their lives to recording a history
in the margins.
A recent shift in my work has led to truths about how marginalized
diasporic communities—in particular the Kashmiri and Punjabi
Sikh communities—can perpetrate further marginalization within
their own people in relation to caste, nationality, economic status,
sexuality, or gender, and more widely against people of other
races and religions. Notions of the diaspora and the homogeneity
of community can be torn apart by external issues affecting
Kashmiri and Punjabi Sikhs, but can also be broken by these
internal prejudices.