rite of passage
rite of passage, 2021 / textile / acrylic color / sound / image © hotel maria chapel
as a parting gift to their residency period at de ateliers, rah’s final exhibition work was a banner illustrating and highlighting the critique of art institutions through the wishes of artists of color. the work acts as a blueprint marking an incantation with ideas and diagrams that describe a structural alternative for the white homogeneous institutional framework.
the tenor of this petition-like piece is based on a process of interviews and conversations with artists from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. in these talks, naqvi asks people about how they experience art institutions in the netherlands and what kind of organizations they reimagine or would like to see instead. whereas these interviewees are semi-anonymous, the dialogues are enriched by the different value systems of the communities from which they come from. snippets from the interviews are present in the space on multimedia players positioned alongside the textile piece.
a litte poem
a little poem, 2021 / chainmail / 20 x 16 x 8.5 in. / image © gert jan van rooij
titled ‘a little poem’, is a pillow made of chainmail placed on a white pedestal. It refers to privileged elites whose lives are often not affected by the current universal calamities and crises.
habitat of dissent
titled ‘habitat of dissent’, is a mechanical work, a rotating back-scratcher that is holding a hand-fan from rah’s home town, Aligarh. memories of home are now irrefutably fused with erasure as Naqvi recalls their elders using these hand-held fans to cool the children down during severe heat and power cuts. The work refers to the fatigue and exhaustion accompanying familial care, which the artist sees as an integral tool to sustain forms of dissent in a collapsing democracy. maternal care is the blueprint to our resistances, summoning home and these memories of care, attrition, and resistance relay us to current day India as the ruling right-wing government clamps down its chokehold on dissent.
habitat of dissent, 2021 / back scratcher, hand-fan/ fan: 12 x 7.5 in. / mount: 5.5(h) x 5(w) x 16(l) in. / image © gert jan van rooij
naqvi’s works are often motivated by current sociopolitical and cultural issues at stake. They contain an element of humor intended to convey critique in an accessible manner. The collaborative element in their work urges for the solidarity they deem necessary for any kind of organized oppositional action. Their works thus leave us with open-ended questions on the role of art in ongoing and unresolved struggles as well as the employment of aesthetics in protest cultures.