BANQUET EXOTICA
linocut, ink on Southbank paper and cardboard envelope
In the manner of Barthes, who in ‘Mythologies’ (1957) writes “myth is neither a lie not a confession: it is an inflexion”, this project assembles a series of juxtapositions to recontextualise cultural references as evocations, rather than definitions, of new meaning.
This ‘triptych’ is based around a series of open compound phrases, referring to on the one hand, the ad hoc naming conventions of diasporic South Asian restaurants, as well as the Oriental- ist glossary of the colonial Subcontinent. Paired with stylised yet generic imagery, the prints can either be perceived as an ironic appropriation of an Orientalist gaze. Yet, the very act of presenting through the reductive form of linocut transforms them into empty caricatures, thus only to be taken at face value as myths.
As Barthes puts it, it is the myth-reader that determines the function of the work, thus the contradictory nature of this enquiry is ultimately resolved in the perception of each individual viewer.
A guide to certain words:
Indus: the name of a trans-Himalayan river in Central and South Asia. Flows through my hometown, Lahore.
Kurrachee: colonial-era spelling of the city of Karachi.