Alongside our current exhibition, Karuppu, join artist Osheen Siva for this free, in-person workshop rooted in Dalit history, focusing on the legacy of the Dalit Panthers.
This event utilises speculative fiction as a tool to explore a future in which multi-dimensional narratives are built, while being anchored through an anti-caste, anti-racist and intersectional feminist lens.
Things to note:
About the workshop:
During the workshop, we’ll look into the origins, history, legacy of the Dalit Panthers movement. Exploring how the call for action was manifested physically through art and design, through the means of newsletters, posters, typography, colours, and so on. In parallel, we also focus on the history of protest artworks throughout history such as the poster designs from the 70s punk movement, art practices of creatives like Keith Haring, Shiva Nallaperumal, Rajni Perera, Panther’s Paw Publications, and Octavia Butler amongst others.
With the knowledge of Dalit history and the universe of futurisms we’ll combine the two using speculative fiction to create our own empowering narratives. Using the Dalit Panther newsletter as the template, we speculate what the year 3000 would look like for the Dalit community.
This will be envisioned through:
Osheen Siva is a multidisciplinary artist from Thiruvannamalai, currently based in Goa. Through the lens of surrealism, speculative fiction and science fiction and rooted in their Dalit and Tamil heritage, Osheen imagines new worlds of decolonised dreamscapes, futuristic oases with mutants and monsters and narratives of queer and feminine power.