Hierarchizing Humans: Typologies of Race, Caste and Labor
Image: Anonymous. Las castas. 18th century. Oil on canvas, 148×104 cm. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Spanish and Portuguese Casta Paintings are visual representations of the sistema de castas (caste system), which organized society based on “purity” - whiteness - of racial heritage, leaving people of color out of frame. Though caste was eliminated in Mexico in 1821, for example, its remnants persist within and beyond Mexico’s borders. The hierarchization of humans according to settler regimes is visible in everyday discrimination - whether pertaining to labor, civil rights, or justice. In focusing on narratives that break out of these hierarchies, this gallery seeks to show how people live outside of racial boxes, and how thinking with casta images in the Americas might offer a different optic on caste systems elsewhere.
Indian Casta Paintings
Kavya Nayak
Digital art, 2020
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.
The Colonist's Invention
Emily Rockwell
Pen and colored pencil on paper, 2020
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.
a star called anna
Lucy Spahr
Video documentary, 2020
Artist's Statement: A Star Called Anna is about the first Asian-American movie star, from her roots living in Chinatown to starring in over fifty films. I sought to make a film about Anna when I realized I did not know her story beyond her iconic name. While she was often cast in stereotypical roles, she fought back against discrimination. This film is a celebration of her life. Anna is an inspiration who paved the way for others in Hollywood, especially during a time of anti-Asian racist legislation exemplified by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. She set the stage, but it is important that representation continue in Hollywood and beyond. The 2018 release of Crazy Rich Asians was the first major production in 25 years to feature an entirely Asian and Asian American cast, and more diverse stories like these need to be told to continue breaking borders.
vaqueros aren't white
Gabriela Treviño
Collaged found images, 2020
Artist's Statement: Vaqueros Aren’t White is meant to frame a reimagining of the United States’ westward expansion after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The general public policy--reflected in un-checked white vigilantism, legislation that barred former Mexican citizens from becoming American citizens despite their living on the land for generations, and fueling race-tensions outward--was to frame the newly-obtained land as desolate and open for conquest. The Treaty provided no protections for the indigenous peoples, former Mexican citizens, or free Black people inhabiting the land, leaving them vulnerable to white rage that was not waged upward toward the white elite classes, but instead “... waged race war outward, on the frontier.”[1]
This collage pays homage to the cowboys, ranch hands, and farmers of color who tended the land given(stolen) in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and were erased by white Americans. What if the treaty, as a stipulation of handing over the land, demanded that the Mexican citizens on the land be given American citizenship? What if they had been allowed to stay on the lands of their ancestors? How might our conceptions of the West, and images of the West such as cowboys be different today? The American cowboy of the real and Hollywood-imagined West would not exist without the Vaquero, an indigenous mixed-race, or Black farmer and ranch-dweller whose existence stretches back to Spanish rule over Mexico. This history has been erased by popular western figures such as The Duke or The Lone Ranger. By portraying vaqueros of color against a black and white western scene, Vaqueros Aren’t White compels the viewer to consider who had to be silenced for the American West as we know it to exist.
[1] Grandin, G. The End of the Myth. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019, 95.