In London for a few weeks, QT Desi folk based here DM me if you have the time to meet to chat about starting some creative fires together in the near future… #unionjack #mapofindia #mapofsrilanka #flagburning #britishcolonialism #southasiansensations #fire #immolation #rampurhound
image: Let Them Lie (2016): indian ink marker, watercolour, coloured pencil and synthetic polymer paint on cotton paper, 112 × 77 cm
The western proverb to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ is set alight here as an allegory for colonial apologism and denial. The resting dog is a Rampur hound, bred into existence by a Nawab of Rampur state during the British Raj in India. The bloodlines of the English greyhound and the ferocious Tāzī hound from Afghanistan were combined to create a more obedient hunting dog, highly desired by the Maharajahs and the rich. Today the breed exists as a rare pet, owned primarily by India’s upper-caste financial elite, many of whom carry nostalgia for the greater material wealth their family possessed under British rule. The artist is naked and awake, embracing the symbolic sleeping animal as they lie upong the Union Jack, their bodies about to be immolated in a fire resembling the inverted maps of India and Sri Lanka.