Water over Skin: a Postcolonial Analysis of the Transformation of Cultural Identity

My research is grounded in personal experience of migration and diaspora as a woman of mixed-race descent. Research for my studio practice explores the metaphor of Water Over Skin. My quest for identity is a journey resembling water that flows over lines of demarcation. I see the female body, a recurring theme, inscribed within personal, psychological and physical boundaries involving landscape, domesticity, clothing. Imagery is appropriated from Indian art and mythology; colonial history; family photographs from India and England. The work incorporates text from my own writing and a created language based on Hindustani script. The exegesis embraces an interdisciplinary approach including history, cultural studies and autobiography. Issues of difference both racial and cultural focus the research around key themes of shame, the ?third space' of hybridity, race and gender. Referring to autobiographical elements, the transformation from a political assimilationist perspective is explored, deeply shaped by personal shame. Grounded in postmodernism and postcolonialism the exegesis draws on wide ranging theoretical perspectives to provide a framework and context for my studio practice.