The Community Partnership Gallery at the Queens Museum provides opportunities for our cultural and other nonprofit organizational partners to develop and mount short-term exhibitions based on their programs and our collaborative projects. In addition, it regularly showcases the work of students in the Museum’s Department of Education programs.

A Bomb, With Ribbon Around It

South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) Annual Visual Arts Show

Curated by Raúl Zamudio

The exhibition’s title refers to the Surrealist André Breton’s famous remark upon encountering Frida Kahlo’s art: “a ribbon around a bomb.” His poetic description of Kahlo’s painting was based on its differentiation from her male Mexican artistic contemporaries, for almost half her oeuvre consists of self-portraiture where social and political questions were encoded through her ever-shifting identity and personal history. Kahlo’s sense of self was so complicated and layered that it unquestionably shaped her artistic self-fashioning that included, among other characters, a male deer, a mother, a baby, an androgynous woman, Parvati the Hindu Goddess, an indigenous bride, identical twins, and an invalid.

Breton’s descriptive is an apt characterization of this presentation of works by South Asian women that metaphorically depict the self in personal, social, or cultural guises that will be as attractive, unassuming, and pristine as a beautiful ribbon. Yet untying that ribbon triggers an explosion of subject matter that addresses contemporary conditions of globalization apparent in politics, immigration, gender equality, sexuality, religion and so forth. Exhibited artworks include painting, work-on-paper, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. A publication will accompany the exhibition with reproductions of artists’ works, their bios and statements, and an essay by the curator.

The Community Partnership Gallery at the Queens Museum provides opportunities for our cultural and other nonprofit organizational partners to develop and mount short-term exhibitions based on their programs and our collaborative projects. In addition, it regularly showcases the work of students in the Museum’s Department of Education programs.

The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) has served South Asian women since 1997 and has earned a reputation for showcasing cutting-edge work that deals intelligently with issues of gender and cultural representation. Current programs include monthly events presenting the work of South Asian women artists; Practice/Process/Portfolio, a studio circle for visual artists; a listserv for South Asian women; and an annual auction, exhibition and literature festival open to the public. SAWCC provides women of South Asian descent links to various communities and encourages their growth as artists by providing a venue to exchange ideas and feedback on their creative work and network with other South Asian women artists, educators, community workers, and professionals.