Michelle Williams Gamaker, Thieves, (behind the scenes still with Ananya Jaidev as the Silver Maiden), 2022. Photo: Ellen Jane Rogers
The Chai Shai: Asian British Art research group aims to address the underrepresentation of Asian British women artists in exhibitions and challenge their under-representation and invisibility in the British Art world.
Join the group for a reading event with artist Michelle Williams Gamaker. Williams Gamaker will read two poems by Sally Wen Mao and a chapter from The China Mystique by Karen J. Leong. She will discuss the texts and her wider interests in the politics of race and representation in conversation with artists and researchers Bindu Mehra, Jasmir Creed and Professor Kristen Kreider.
The Chai Shai: Asian British Art (with a focus on South Asian British and East Asian Contemporary Women Artists Practice) attempts to shed light on the systematic barriers, including racism and misogyny, that prevent these artists from gaining equal exposure and recognition within visual arts. By bringing together artists, writers, curators, academics, and researchers, they aim to generate new channels of thinking and networking that will contribute towards the development of British Art curating.
Through reading groups, film screenings, performance, workshops and symposia, they aim to create thinking spaces that will unpack notions of invisibility and disenchantment, and identity strategies for redressing this imbalance. The Chai Shai: Asian British Art project will be archived within the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Art Museum.
ABOUT CHAI SHAI: ASIAN BRITISH ART
Chai Shai: Asian British Art (with a focus on South Asian British and East Asian Contemporary Women Artists Practice) research group aims to address underrepresentation of Asian British women artists in exhibitions and challenge their under-representation and invisibility in the British Art world. Our focus is to shed light on the systematic barriers, including racism and misogyny, that prevent these artists from gaining equal exposure and recognitions within visual arts. By bringing together artists, writers, curators, academics, and researchers, we aim to generate new channels of thinking and networking that will contribute towards the development of British Art curating e.g. generating material and networks leading to a new exhibition of contemporary artists work.
ABOUT MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER
Award winning moving image artist Michelle Williams Gamaker (b.1979, London) has developed Fictional Activism to interrogate 20th Century cinema, by retelling the histories of marginalised actors and by proposing critical alternatives to colonial storytelling in British and Hollywood studio films.
She is joint winner of Film London’s Jarman Award (2020) and has an extensive national and international profile, including prestigious BFI London Film Festivals (2017, 2018, 2021), Aesthetica (winner of Best Experimental Film, 2021) and Raindance (2022). Recent exhibitions include I Multiply Each Day, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2021), The Whitechapel London Open 2022, Like There is Hope and I Can Dream of Another World at Hauser & Wirth and a major public commission Springfield Eternal in the atrium of Springfield Hospital for charity Hospital Rooms, opening in 2023.
ABOUT BINDU MEHRA
Bindu Mehra is an inter-media artist and a PhD candidate at Slade School of Fine Art. She uses drawing, video, and sculpture to navigate themes of memory, loss, and resilience. Her film, ‘The Inaccessible Narrative’ has recently been nominated for an award at the Cannes Short Film festival. Bindu was short listed for Documenta 14 (independent project) and at Tate Britain, London UK 2009.
She has exhibited at The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, UK Centro de Cultura Contemporanea, Castelo Branco, Portugal; Scope Art Fair New York, USA; Alwan for the Art, New York, USA; Blackburn Museum, UK; Novas Contemporary Art Centre, UK; Chiang Mai Museum, Thailand; OZ Asia Festival, Adelaide, Australia, British Council, New Delhi, India and Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, India. Bindu has also been invited by the French Consulate as an artist in Residence to Paris and participated in Bonjour India: French Cultural Festival in India. She currently lives and works between Delhi and London.
ABOUT JASMIR CREED
Jasmir Creed is a practice led PhD researcher at the Slade School of Fine Art. She explores alienation and the transcultural in paintings of people in urban non-places or iconic historical sites, informed by her identity as a British South Asian artist. Solo exhibitions of paintings by Jasmir Creed include Urban Forest at Delta House Studios, London 2017; Dystopolis at Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool 2018 and Utopolis at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery 2023. Group exhibitions include Asia Triennial Manchester 2018, Home and Unhome at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China, 2020 and Art Contact, Istanbul Art Fair, Turkey 2021.
ABOUT KRISTEN KREIDER
Professor Kristen Kreider is a writer and artist. Her research stems from an interest in the poetics of thought, its materialization as form, and a concern with how artworks relate to the world. In collaboration with the architect James O’Leary, Kreider’s artistic practice engages with sites of architectural and cultural interest and they are currently working on a large-scale project, Ungovernable Spaces, engaging with five sites of community and resistance globally. Acting primarily as a facilitator for this project, Kristen brings to this her experience working with postgraduate art research at UCL, Oxford and Goldsmiths. Kristen is currently Professor of Fine Art and Head of the Doctoral Programme and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
ACCESS
- This event is seated.
- Wheelchair Access and Disabled Toilets are available at this site.
- Please contact mail@southlondongallery.org with access requirements.