ARTIST BIO

Seerat Kaur is an interdisciplinary artist that investigates the lasting impacts of colonisation through installation, performance, video, and sound. Kaur’s work address the physical manifestations of familial trauma and the politics of belonging in order to challenge traditional power structures and bring forth new histories through individual and collective actions. Her work includes durational lecture performances framed in terms of economic, cultural and social forces (Walls); as well as public art interventions around Chicago such as the Agora sculptures (We the Women).

Kaur is a candidate for the BFA with honors degree in performance art with a visual critical studies thesis from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago with expected graduation in 2023. She also a recipient of the presidential merit scholarship from the university.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The conceptual focus of my practice investigates my body as a site of resistance through durational lecture performances. My work analyzes the lasting impacts of colonization and how that functions within an ever globalized society. I examine historical narratives and assimilation culture relative to my own family’s experience. By challenging traditional theories of kin and belonging, I bring these new histories to the forefront.

The end of British colonial rule in India led to the creation of a new country known as Pakistan by running a senseless line through the heart of the subcontinent. The partition of 1947, one of the bloodiest forced migrations killed 3 million and displaced 15 million. Growing up, I heard stories from my grandparents had to leave everything behind in the middle of the night and flee Pakistan for India. Most of the families didn’t make it across the border. My own grandmother who is from Rawalpindi (present day Pakistan) was one of seven siblings that made it across. Similarly, born in India, and moving to the U.K as a child and then being shipped back to India as an adolescent I find my life running parallel to how The British East India Company set about stealing cotton cultivated in India to the U.K to create finished products to sell back to India.

Using these stories as a foundation, my work addresses the physical manifestations of familial trauma through epigenetics and the politics of belonging to inverse traditional power settings that one experiences in Academic/Institutional settings by placing a queer brown person in a position of authority.