VIEW IN MY ROOM
Ungrievable Lives Installation
United States
Installation, Fabric on Other
Size: 30 W x 48 H x 24 D in
Ships in a Crate
About The Artwork
"What makes for a grievable life? Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives?" - Judith Butler, “Precarious Life,” 2004. This work seeks to examine the differential values placed on human life as it has emerged in the post-9/11 political discourse. The victims of 9/11 no doubt suffered a horrible death, and the national and international mourning that followed in the wake of 9/11 was understandable. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, indeed we will re-perform our acts of mourning and remembrance. We lost 2,983* American lives on 9/11/2001, and in the past decade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed 911,931** Iraqi and Afghani lives. Judith Butler calls these as “ungrievable” lives, for to grieve them is to declare oneself unpatriotic to the US nation, and sympathetic to the “enemy.” It seems to me that the 9/11 victims are the gold standard of a grievable life. This work seeks to apprehend the value of one American life in terms of non-American lives. How does the scale tilt in terms of grievable and ungrievable lives? With this work, I seek to perform the unpatriotic act of mourning and remembering the humanity of the ungrievable 911,931 Iraqi and Afghani civilians and troops that have lost their lives in the last decade. *Figures from http://www.911memorial.org/ **Figures from http://www.unknownnews.org/casualties.html Please click http://www.pritikachowdhry.com/ungrievable-lives/ for more images of this artwork.
Details & Dimensions
Installation:Fabric on Other
Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork
Size:30 W x 48 H x 24 D in
Frame:Not Framed
Ready to Hang:Not applicable
Packaging:Ships in a Crate
Shipping & Returns
Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.
Handling:Ships in a wooden crate for additional protection of heavy or oversized artworks. Crated works are subject to an $80 care and handling fee. Artists are responsible for packaging and adhering to Saatchi Art’s packaging guidelines.
Ships From:United States.
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United States
I explore cultural forms of memory and representations of historical trauma. Transnational in scope, my current work is informed by border-related violence that have occurred in different parts of the world. I seek to connect seemingly disparate geopolitical contexts, because I believe that it is important to bring bridges into being even when it seems untenable to do so. Collective memory of communities and nations provides the viscera with which I build these bridges in my work. Installed in experiential environments, these large-scale sculptures and site-sensitive installations reference the body and function as mobile and temporary memorials. I think of my works as “memory sculptures”, an eloquent term coined by cultural scholar, Andreas Huyssen. As an interdisciplinary artist, I migrate between fibers, paper, clay, paint, drawing, and photography. My studio practice is informed equally by material sensibilities as well as current cultural discourses of diaspora and migration, post-colonial theory, and feminist and queer theory. This eclecticism anchors my art practice and my understanding of the worlds I inhabit.
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