Queer Migrations

This commentary brings my personal migration story to bear on our shifting understanding of both queers and migrants into the realm of contemporary art practice. It focuses on four major projects that I had exhibited over a ten-year period starting in 2004 and attempts to devise a theoretical link between these works. It is my intention through the commentary to create a coherent rationale about my practice and how it followed my movements. My aim in making the artworks was to give visibility to an otherwise invisible history and one that has remained so within art history. The writing is also breaking through the silence around this subjectivity and to engage in a way that would be meaningful to artists and scholars in the future. It was my intention to create original works of art that were presented nationally and internationally. I intended for them to address the questions that I had about being a queer male of Indian origin living in the West, and then returning to live in India. In this commentary I draw out the knowledge built from each project as they were made often in response to pressing political or social need in a local context such as Section 28 (1988) in the UK or Section 377 in India (1861). These shifting migrations have constructed a thread through the projects, which highlight the significantly different approaches that informed my practice whilst the overall questions remain constant.