Gender Bender
Georgina Maddox Posted online: Monday , Feb 15, 2010 at 0350 hrs
It's black it's white," crooned the late pop icon Michael Jackson in
his 1991 music video on racial peace and harmony. For most, it was an
over exploited cliché that made the world happy briefly for the length
of the music video. But almost twenty years later, the video holds
resonance for Afro Modern dance performer, Diepiriye Sungumote Kuku,
who will be collaborating with Dalit artist Savi Savarkar for a
presentation titled 'Cross-dressing to Cross-over: Queering Michael
Jackson's gender, race and class performance', slotted to unfurl at
the M F Husain Gallery, Jamia Millia Islamia, on 18th and 23rd
February.
"There are deeper layers to the music video and Michael's transition
from his Thriller days. Michael's queer, pimp-like black sexuality
morphed to a more polished, feminine boyish drag that was acceptable.
But underneath, lurked a well-concealed rage at being black and
marginalised," says Kuku, who will be bringing to life Savarkar's
larger than life paintings and drawings of Dalit monks and fictional
heroes.
"It is this rage that I want to tap into and highlight," adds the
dancer. Savarkar first invited Kuku to collaborate in 2008 as a means
to explore caste and racism for his Expo 'Eyes Re Caste' at Rabindra
Bhawan, Lalit Kala Akademi where Kuku performed to 'Four Women' by
Nina Simone. This time the collaboration is to express solidarity
through subversion in pop culture.
"All my projects are about social exclusion and Dalit aesthetics in
the last 25 years," says Savarkar who was discovered by theatre
activist and curator Lokesh Jain, and later supported by Mustafa Khan,
of Jamia. "Collaborating with Kuku has brought life to my work since
his body and posture is so much like a living sculpture. It adds
another layer to the paintings-our friendship has blossomed into a
great working relationship," observes Savarkar.
Aside from the performance, Kuku's talk will highlight the kind of
solidarity expressed by black pop icons like Jackson and Tina Turner.
"Tina was a big lesbian icon in the '80s and '90s but she was really a
projection of Ike Turner's own inability to express his masculinity.
The use of drag in pop music, whether it's Tina, James Brown or Jack
Wilson is really a compromise that people have made to become
acceptable in dominant society," he observes.
Savarkar's Expo opens on February 18, while Kuku's dance performance
is on February 23 between 3 and 4.30 pm at the M F Husain Gallery
Jamia
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