Reclaiming Shared Spaces in Public through Creative Endeavour: A Reflection and Contextualization of Collaborative Community Art Projects Engaging Women and Young Adults in Marginalised Communities in South Asia

Roy, Sreejata

Reclaiming Shared Spaces in Public through Creative Endeavour: A Reflection and Contextualization of Collaborative Community Art Projects Engaging Women and Young Adults in Marginalised Communities in South Asia

Roy, Sreejata

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2023

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Roy, Sreejata
dc.date.accessioned	2024-04-23T23:26:18Z
dc.date.available	2024-04-23T23:26:18Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/178308
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	This thesis is located within the contemporary discourse of Socially Engaged Art (SEA). It is grounded in my current SEA practice, initiated in the metropolis of Delhi, India, in 2007 and continuing into the present. My qualitative research practice is undertaken with ethnically diverse marginalised communities in disenfranchised localities, through projects situated at widely separated sites across the city. Directly intervening within the challenging physical spaces of these densely populated working-class neighbourhoods, my cross-genre, cross- media, gender-focused practice focuses on how, via creative engagement, young people and women individually and collectively attempt to inscribe/reclaim personal socio-cultural spaces within their existent environments. From the outset I have followed principles of practice-led research in my SEA projects. This approach, unlike that of practice-based research, is not concerned with the ‘improvement’ of practice – it does not prioritise the inscription of ‘new epistemologies of practice’, or the sophisticated analysis of field data, or textual contributions to the ‘intellectual or conceptual architecture of a discipline’ (Haseman 2006,3). Rather, within the ‘intrinsically experiential’ and ‘messy’ frameworks of practice-led research it is the new artistic forms emerging through community-based creative engagement that constitute the research findings (ibid.). My practice-led approach aligns with the conceptual domain of ‘relational art’ (Bourriaud 1998) wherein the ‘sphere of human relations’ may be seen and treated as a site of artwork; and with the open-ended schema of ‘dialogical aesthetics’ (Kester 2005) wherein critical focus is not on any produced art object but on the condition and character of interpersonal exchanges within/beyond SEA project frameworks. These trajectories are reinforced by/through affect- oriented feminist epistemology, ethnography and ethics that are central to my methodology. This research delineates specific Indian and international SEA projects, including my own SEA projects, as case studies of counter-hegemonic interventions with diverse communities in diverse cultural contexts. I examine subtle/radical forms of trespass, narratives of dissent, resistance and empowerment, the complex shaping of alternative publics, the rupture/fracture of prescriptive social norms, the reversal of the gaze, and hierarchies of access and knowledge production. I analyse the new spatial dynamics, new subjectivities, new networks, and new tropes of social inclusion/exclusion evident within the more democratic, participatory aesthetic paradigms underpinning these projects, and link these observations to my research hypothesis. This practice-led research significantly contributes to the nascent SEA theorisation in India and adds a new critical voice to SEA discourse emerging from the global South.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/178308/1/thesis.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2023 Sreejata Roy
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/nph
dc.title	Reclaiming Shared Spaces in Public through Creative Endeavour: A Reflection and Contextualization of Collaborative Community Art Projects Engaging Women and Young Adults in Marginalised Communities in South Asia	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

This thesis is located within the contemporary discourse of Socially Engaged Art (SEA). It is grounded in my current SEA practice, initiated in the metropolis of Delhi, India, in 2007 and continuing into the present. My qualitative research practice is undertaken with ethnically diverse marginalised communities in disenfranchised localities, through projects situated at widely separated sites across the city. Directly intervening within the challenging physical spaces of these densely populated working-class neighbourhoods, my cross-genre, cross- media, gender-focused practice focuses on how, via creative engagement, young people and women individually and collectively attempt to inscribe/reclaim personal socio-cultural spaces within their existent environments. From the outset I have followed principles of practice-led research in my SEA projects. This approach, unlike that of practice-based research, is not concerned with the ‘improvement’ of practice – it does not prioritise the inscription of ‘new epistemologies of practice’, or the sophisticated analysis of field data, or textual contributions to the ‘intellectual or conceptual architecture of a discipline’ (Haseman 2006,3). Rather, within the ‘intrinsically experiential’ and ‘messy’ frameworks of practice-led research it is the new artistic forms emerging through community-based creative engagement that constitute the research findings (ibid.). My practice-led approach aligns with the conceptual domain of ‘relational art’ (Bourriaud 1998) wherein the ‘sphere of human relations’ may be seen and treated as a site of artwork; and with the open-ended schema of ‘dialogical aesthetics’ (Kester 2005) wherein critical focus is not on any produced art object but on the condition and character of interpersonal exchanges within/beyond SEA project frameworks. These trajectories are reinforced by/through affect- oriented feminist epistemology, ethnography and ethics that are central to my methodology. This research delineates specific Indian and international SEA projects, including my own SEA projects, as case studies of counter-hegemonic interventions with diverse communities in diverse cultural contexts. I examine subtle/radical forms of trespass, narratives of dissent, resistance and empowerment, the complex shaping of alternative publics, the rupture/fracture of prescriptive social norms, the reversal of the gaze, and hierarchies of access and knowledge production. I analyse the new spatial dynamics, new subjectivities, new networks, and new tropes of social inclusion/exclusion evident within the more democratic, participatory aesthetic paradigms underpinning these projects, and link these observations to my research hypothesis. This practice-led research significantly contributes to the nascent SEA theorisation in India and adds a new critical voice to SEA discourse emerging from the global South.

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