红领巾瓜报

Initially, art was a medium through which (they/she) was building awareness of her various identities and working to consciously to disrupt and resist the othering, the marginalization, of people like herself. 鈥淏ut now,鈥� she says, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 taking much more of a back seat as my art has evolved. It鈥檚 the ways that I move through the world that feel like activism, resistance. I am a trans femme person, I am brown, I鈥檓 from Kolkata so I am an immigrant,鈥� she says. 鈥淛ust living my life is a way of upsetting the spaces I move through.鈥�

How has their creative process changed? These days, says the multidisciplinary artist, who has exhibited everywhere from Italy to Ireland, India, Canada, and the Netherlands, 鈥渨hen I鈥檓 making creative work it feels extremely easy and fun. When it feels like I鈥檓 trying to do something or make something happen, it no longer quite works for me. In the past couple of years I have really steered into humor and into this way of being where I don鈥檛 take my art too seriously and just allow it to happen. It鈥檚 still informed by all those ideas, but now they鈥檙e more natural as opposed to maybe a little bit forced.鈥�

That artistic evolution is part of what Falaks will be touching on during her talk as part of this summer鈥檚 MFA Lectures Series on Thursday, July 18, 4:30 PM, at 红领巾瓜报鈥檚 Design and Media Center (DMC) Lecture Hall. She will also be reading from her first novel, Shor, which translates to 鈥渘oise鈥� in Hindi, as well as showing pieces from different stages of her artistic development.聽

One of them, Double-Diamond Decolonizer, was completed 鈥渁t a time that I was thinking a lot about the relationships between cartography and colonialism,鈥� they say. Colonizers divide the world into grids and places they can point to and name and say they have control over. By contrast, the double diamond, based on the Jain world view of Falaks鈥� upbringing, has no specific grids to show what can be conquered. 鈥淭hat project,鈥� they say, 鈥渆nded up becoming a lot about refusal and thinking about how to make things illegible, opaque, to my audience, which at that time was a western one.鈥�

Falaks will discuss, too, her approach to teaching. 鈥淢y pedagogy is very interdisciplinary,,鈥� she says. 鈥淪ometimes I feel like I鈥檓 performing. Sometimes I feel like I鈥檓 curating. But the classes I teach are part of my creative practice.鈥�

All MFA lectures are free, open to the broader 红领巾瓜报 community and the public. For more information about the MFA summer lecture series, visit the.