Brown Jouissance on a Carpet from Sultanabad in the Yale Center for British Arts
The body is implicitly present in cloth and often explicitly present in the imagery of my paintings. I am particularly interested in intervening in Western histories of painting the nude body through a lens of idealization and objectification. Rather than covering up or obscuring the nude, I lean into a performance of excess nudity and, often, eroticism. This approach utilizes brown jouissance, defined by Amber Jamilla Musser in her book Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance as the knowledge producing sensuality and sexuality that resides within the fleshiness of brown, femme body and exceeds the constraints of objectification that are constantly placed upon it.
2021
Oil on handwoven jute
86.5 x 216 inches (diptych), 86.5 x 108 inches each
Brown Jouissance on a Carpet from Sultanabad in the Yale Center for British Arts depicts the artist masturbating on the carpet in the title, while “Oriental” animals drawn from paintings in the YCBA collection make eye contact with the viewer. Bhasha explicitly inserts her brown femme body in ecstasy into a sterile institutional space where the carpet stands in for empire and colonial grandeur. By depicting a type of body that is often objectified and exoticized in a hyper-sexualized position, and as thoroughly enjoying this position, Bhasha activates the political power of “brown jouissance.” Here, the artist’s body is not only the object of a violent, oppressive gaze, but is a powerful self-determined site of pleasure.
Study on a Carpet from Dilli Haat in an Apartment in New Haven
2022
Oil on jute
Two panels, 84 x 99.5 inches each
Study on a Carpet from Dilli Haat in an Apartment in New Haven is both a painting of a carpet as well as a carpet that is a painting. While the earlier work described above explores private, intimate activity (masturbation) on a carpet in an academic, institutional space, this piece looks at the institutional, academic activity of “study” on a carpet in the private space of a home. Rather than wild, exotic animals from colonial paintings, here her companion is a pet dog. The origin of the carpet is identified in the title: Dilli Haat, a contemporary bazaar in New Delhi. The primary subject is not the woman, dog, or books but the carpet itself. This is a study of the carpet, as much as it is an image of studying on a carpet. As the painting is done on a common carpet-making material (jute) that is also a traditional painting surface, this piece works to close the gap between the allegedly European “fine art” of painting and the Oriental “craft” of carpet weaving or textile making.
