Sarah K. Khan’s exhibition at the BRIC, combining ceramics, printmaking, video, digital animation, and text, dives into histories of colonialism, global migration, maritime trade, foodways, cartography, unruly women in the African, Arab, and Asian worlds, contemporary diasporas, and much else. If that sounds like a lot, it is — in part because these ideas are so capacious that each one spills over into the next.
A series of linocuts titled Undisciplined Pleasures, Vigilant Defiance are based on a 15th-century Persian illustrated manuscript, Kitab Ni’matnama-i Nashirshahi (Nasir Shah’s Book of Delights), a compendium of the delicious foods enjoyed by the court of the Sultan of Malwa in present-day northwest India. Dating from the pre-Mughal era, the manuscript reflects a lively cultural exchange between Africa and West, Central, and South Asia that far predated the European age of exploration and colonialism — a worthy subject for a show that is, in its way, an ode to long legacies of immigration and cultural encounter.
Sarah K. Khan, “Undisciplined Pleasures: Razia Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate (Black Pepper, Cinnamon, Clove)” (2020), printed on handmade Wasli paper, on an etching press, infused the etching ink and essential oils and extracts (photo Aruna D’Souza/Hyperallergic)
Khan distills and expands the original illustrations, removing the men who are being served and focusing instead on the women doing the serving. She inserts historical figures, too, including Queen Bilqis, also known as the Queen of Sheba; Razia Sultan, a rare female ruler in 13th-century Delhi; Weyzero Abebach, an Ethiopian woman who resisted Italian fascism in the 1930s; the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut; and the Iranian-born graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. The prints are surrounded by porcelain objects: Lugers, swords, scimitars, rolling pins, pencils in a cup — weapons of destruction and tools of creation (sometimes both at once).
In the center of the space is an array of porcelain serving dishes that recall the blue and white pottery famous throughout Western, Central, and South Asia since the 9th century, as well as other brightly colored plates, bowls, and utensils. Some of these depict different spices traded along the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea coastlines (nutmeg, cloves, pepper, etc.), each with their names rendered in multiple languages, dislocating the Eurocentrism of their current appellations. On the back wall, a tiled panel shows a trio of dhows navigating choppy waters, while an ostentation of ceramic peacocks climbs the wall in a spiral, and two digital animations based on motifs from the manuscript swirl and morph.
This is a project that has grown out of years of archival research, and you can get the sense that the artist is an educator at heart; the extensive wall texts spell out the many historical and visual connections in the show. But occasionally this means the viewer is left very little space for discovery — ironic, given the emphasis in the show on what blossoms in the act of encounter. A five-paragraph label for a group of porcelain dishes reads in part, “This piece encourages generative discussions on race and ethnicity via the lens of migration — the movement of people, plants, and ideas.” It’s a pity this is spelled out so explicitly. Given the chance, I suspect viewers — especially those of us who are immigrants — could have experienced the joy of coming to those understandings on our own, through the visual pleasures offered up by the work itself.
Installation view of porcelain serving dishes and tiles by Sarah K. Khan in Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America at BRIC, Brooklyn (photo Aruna D’Souza/Hyperallergic)
Installation view of etchings with ink infused with essential oils and porcelain objects by Sarah K. Khan in Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America at BRIC, Brooklyn (photo Sebastian Bach)
Close-up view of porcelain Luger pistols in Sarah K. Khan: Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America at BRIC, Brooklyn (photo Aruna D’Souza/Hyperallergic)
Installation view of glazed porcelain cleavers in Sarah K. Khan: Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America at BRIC, Brooklyn (photo Sebastian Bach)
Installation view of Sarah K. Khan: Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America at BRIC, Brooklyn (photo Sebastian Bach)
Sarah K. Khan: Speak, Sing, Shout: We, Too, Sing America continues at BRIC (647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn) through December 23. The exhibition is part of the series What Can Become of Us, a collaboration between Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies and Zócalo Public Square.
