Artist's Statement: This artwork is a visual counter-narrative to the Indian caste system, stylized in the form of Spanish Casta Paintings. Though temporally and geographically dislocated from Indian colonization, Spanish Casta paintings placed an important cultural role in shaping Western perceptions of India: The words “caste system” were actually adapted from the Portuguese word “casta” when British colonizers compared the two systems due to their shared emphasis on purity.

I chose the digital art medium: I superimposed backgrounds that have traditional Indian fabric patterns associated with the style of dress of each caste (varna). I used colonial British drawings of Indians [1] and matched them up to the corresponding caste. Instead of showing the whole body, I focused on the part of the body that is associated with each caste in traditional Hindu texts: Brahmins are the head, Kshatriyas are the arms, Vaishyas are the legs, and Sudras are the feet. To better represent the Dalit perspective, I incorporated Savi Savakar’s art techniques, particularly his use of iconography. I also represented the invisibility of Dalits by making the image look artfully chipped and cracked on Photoshop, to obscure the man’s face and body.

[1] Vardapillay, T. Seventy Two Specimens of Castes in India: “All People, Nations and Languages Shall Serve Him...Presented to the Revd. William Twining as a Token of Obligation by His Friend Daniel Poor.” February 2, 1837. Painting on mica, 21 cm. Madura, southern India. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2039774.

Artist’s Statement: Eighteenth-century casta paintings are distinctive in their blunt and literal portrayal of the twisted colonial values that drove the policies of the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The casta paintings use rich colors and meticulous detail to rationalize and propagate the idea that racial hierarchy in the colonies was idyllic, clear-cut, and scientifically inevitable. My piece, The Colonist’s Invention, seeks to reclaim the visual characteristics of the casta paintings in order to explore the history of racial and class hierarchy in the Spanish colonies. In the drawing, the typical sixteen segments of the casta painting are surrounded by a gilded frame, literally depicting the casta paintings’ function as a rhetorical frame which seeks to persuade the viewer that the hierarchy within is a scientific truth rather than a social construct. The hand holding the frame represents colonialism, the institution which benefits from the narrative within the frame. The sixteen figures, representing the sixteen racial categories in the casta paintings, move within and across the different compartments, symbolizing the imperfect nature of the hierarchy and bringing to life the false tranquility of the figures in the original casta paintings. These figures react to their condition in various ways. Some blame each other for their suffering without noticing the wider context of the hierarchy, while others fight against the frame itself. Some try to climb up the hierarchy, while others are overcome with despair. Still others look for meaning and purpose within the system, symbolized by the ray of light, without realizing that the light is also a mere illusion within the broader colonial narrative. The tree trapped within the frame references the flora found in the original casta paintings and the fact that colonialism destroys and exploits the natural landscape, renaming and re-appropriating plants across the globe. Everything depicted within the frame is but a disposable resource to the hand of colonialism, yet colonialism itself cannot exist without the frame which fuels and justifies its existence.