Preetika Rajgariah: i ain't sari

Preetika Rajgariah i ain’t sari Jun 21 – Aug 18, 2019

Preetika Rajgariah i ain’t sari Cecily E. Horton Gallery

A play on words referencing hip-hop culture, Preetika Rajgariah’s i ain’t sari utilizes bold combinations of colors and textures in her wall paintings and sculptures to re-envision traditional narratives regarding women, race, and sexuality.

Public Program INSIDE/OUT with Preetika Rajgariah Saturday, July 13, 2019 1-3 PM A panel discussion with Preetika Rajgariah highlighting marginalized identites in the South Asian community

Preetika Rajgariah i ain’t sari Exhibition Checklist

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01. 100% Silk, 2019

Video, duration 00:19 02. Pocket, 2019 Saris

57 x 65” 03. i ain’t sari, 2019

Saris, mixed media and paint

11 x 7’ 04. i ain’t sari, 2019

Saris, mixed media and paint

17 x 9’

05. i ain’t sari, 2019

Saris, mixed media and paint

14 x 8’ 06. gettin’ bodied, 2019

Sari and mixed media

Dimensions variable 07. MotherLover, 2019

Audio, duration 25:00

55 x 90”

We Ain’t Sari

by Eesha Pandit Is this a love letter or a manifesto?

Is it an ode or an declaration?

Is it a map or a labyrinth?

Preetika Rajgariah’s I Aint Sari is a study in simultaneity, which is characteristic of American artists who live within and across identity, especially if they refuse easy characterization of their work and refuse to shrink from simultaneously asserting and challenging those identities. Reimagining the sari, Rajgariah takes an object so often symbolic of gender, sexuality, faith, tradition, history, and craft and transforms it into a live site of reckoning.

Is I Ain’t Sari reclamation or a rejection of the past?

The billows of fabric that swirl over and about are quite literally cut from the cloth of the women in Rajgariah’s life: the saris and blouses are gifted to her from her aunts and mother; their clothes, swathes of tradition history and specificity. In this way, the stuff of family is reclaimed and repurposed throughout the show, such as walls painted with fabric, bindis enlarged and shiny, and the voice of the artist in conversation with her mother. There is intimacy here but, all the while, open questions abound. How can a culture be celebrated for the Kama Sutra yet so silent about female sexuality?

In her poem “My Daughter,” South Asian American poet, Reema Narayan writes about the differences between her own “Indian woman heaviness” and the irreverence of her young daughter. When asked by her daughter, “Does God live in raindrops?” the poet struggles not only with how to answer but also with the event of the question itself. She contrasts herself, with her young child, writing, “We do not ask questions/for fear of living in doubt/of being told/ we talk too much./ We drown inside / within those quiet spaces/ buried beneath our footsteps,/ between loss and acceptance….” Narayan sees in her daughter something else, “It is different with you/… you will ask howcome-why questions/even if there are no answers/you will stand in the rain/with your mouth open, so sure/ that if you swallow one

drop/you will know/ everything.” In her work MotherLover, Rajgariah moves between and through the familiar fear of being told we talk too much, opening up and facing her own mother, and sharing a conversation across generations while also layering in intimate sounds between lovers.

The sound of these “howcome-why” questions is imbued through the exhibit. The artist uses her own voice, her mother’s voice, and her partner’s voice to refuse a passive sexuality.

This process of “coming out of the closet” is often imagined as a means of survival and act of resistance. It is often described as freedom in which you leave something behind and move into something more honest. But what if freedom looks different for some of us?

What if we aren’t willing or able to renounce the place we live and the people we come from? What if we refuse to leave them behind when we walk out of the closet and then maybe the house? What if the questions left behind then begin to haunt us?

What if we are Desi women who refuse to accept that we must choose between these things: Be out, or be with your people? Be proud or be honest? This work rejects the limited spectrum of choice that you can be a good Desi woman or be a queer one. “Coming out” feels like an inadequate signifier when the work actively invites us into the familial context, into the love and desire, into the shimmering folds of our mothers’ stories. What we might have been told about Desi women’s sexuality is confronted and rejected through this invitation to listen closely.

The title of the exhibition comes from hometown legend Beyonce’s song “Sorry” on her 6th studio album, Lemonade, in which the singer confronts her partner’s potential infidelity with irreverence and rage. Irreverence and rage are in dialectic and are twin forces in Rajgaraiah’s work. Through Rajgariah’s exploration of sexuality, pleasure, fabric as paint, various boundaries are breached. Questions are asked and some identities are embraced while others are refused. The work defies an easy characterization and, if we are to find any answers to the “howcome-why” questions, we must move through it slowly, look closely, and listen hard.

For that, Rajgariah makes no apology.

Preetika Rajgariah i ain’t sari Bios

Preetika Rajgariah (b. 1985 in New Delhi, India) is a visual artist whose work explores complexities and contradictions that arise when cultures intersect and collide. Through textiles, adornment, collage, and paint, she creates interdisciplinary works ranging from bodily sculptures to performative works that challenge perceptions of exoticism and the sociopolitical standards in Indian and American cultures.

Eesha Pandit is a queer South Asian writer and activist. She is managing partner and co-founder of the Center for Advancing Innovative Policy (CAIP), where she works on issues of reproductive justice, ending gender based violence, queer liberation, and the rights of immigrants. She is a proud member of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a member of Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, and a co-founder of South Asian Youth in Houston Unite (SAYHU).

Eesha has written for publications around the country including Salon, In These Times, Feministing, Bitch Magazine, and The Nation, among others. She is an immigrant, born in New Delhi, raised in New York, and now proudly calls Houston home.

Mission Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.

About Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.

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