Children of Venus by Uzma Chowdhury (They/Them)

CHILDREN OF VENUS.

UZMA CHOWDHURY (THEY/THEM), ARTIST, GOLDSMITHS.

I was trying to create a surreal, improvised playground style scene in this work. The performers, all from a South Asian background all move in synch with each other; the movement of the see-saw in response to the sound of the oil drum and vice versa. The idea of this live performance was that it was a repetitive/continuous motion throughout and the piece would not climax but stay constant forever, despite any changes in the surrounding art space. It is almost like a live photo or tableaux that isn’t static and that had sound to inform the performers and the audience of the mood and tone of the scene. The idea was to create a completely untouched space for brown bodies to exist in. I tried to keep a sense of purity and naivety which can be referenced the white clothes that move in the space on their own accord with their own sculptural properties. Once the virginal spirits (performers) are removed from the set, the leftover objects (oil drum and see-saw) can be compared to an industrial site with stark lighting and shadows, which gives the audience an ominous feeling. However, the performers have so much control and freedom in this scene that the industrial elements paired with the fragility of the costume make a perfect harmony with the movement and the sound. I play on the spectator, as I know that art audiences are dominated by white crowds, by exploring the idea of ‘Otherness.’ I do this by creating a completely surreal set that can be hard to interpret because the audience tries to project a narrative onto the piece, however, as it is so improvised it is hard to tell what the narrative may be while watching and hearing the movements and sounds. Until you step back and view the

piece as an image and recognize the brown bodies wearing white, it becomes associated to godliness and authority of the space. The multiple factors that go into it make it hard to access and therefore project otherness because audiences are busy trying to strip the work down into a specific linear narrative.

This work is in conjunction with the aim of my practice, to reinsert brown bodies into a white art historical narrative.

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