ARTIST STATEMENT
Remembering the Crooked Line (RTCL) is part of a series of installations that memorialize partitions worldwide, which I call the Partition Memorial Project (PMP). In RTCL, I examine the role of maps and cartography as colonial technologies of partition. My starting point for PMP was intensive research on the history of the partition of India in 1947, and the ethnic violence that erupted in the South Asian subcontinent as a result of this watershed event. Further research revealed that the 20th century saw several partitions worldwide along ethno-religious lines, as a result of colonization and cold-war era politics.
Colonial-era partitions were engineered in India, Palestine, Ireland, and Cyprus – former British colonies, that were divided along ethnic lines at the end of British rule in each country. Partition was a pattern of colonial exit that was offered to the colonized nations as a condition for independence. Cold War-era partitions of Germany, Korea, and Vietnam came about as a result of the two World Wars as the world started aligning with America or Russia and their allies. The partition of Bosnia and the proposed partition of Iraq into Shiastan, Sunnistan, and Kurdistan, are examples of the continuing use of partition along ethnic lines as a motif of neo-colonial domination.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Pritika Chowdhry is an artist, curator, and writer whose artworks are in public and private collections. Pritika has exhibited her works nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weismann Museum in Minneapolis, Queens Museum in New York, the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey, the Islip Art Museum in Long Island, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, the DoVA Temporary in the University of Chicago, the Brodsky Center in Rutgers University, and the Cambridge Art Gallery in Massachusetts.
Pritika is the recipient of a Vilas International Travel Fellowship, an Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, a Wisconsin Arts Board grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Born and brought up in India, Pritika is currently based in Chicago, IL, USA. Pritika has an MFA in Studio Art and an MA in Visual Culture and Gender Studies from UW-Madison. Pritika has taught at Macalester College and College of Visual Arts, both in St. Paul, Minnesota. Published scholarship about Pritika’s work has come out in peer-reviewed research publications and various exhibition catalogs.
Pritika has presented her studio research projects at various national conferences, such as the International Arts Symposium at NYU, The Contested Terrains of Globalization at UC-Irvine, and the South Asian Conference at UW-Madison. Pritika also participates in panels and gives lectures and artist talks about her work by invitation.
© Pritika Chowdhry
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