Cultural Dysphoria: Exploring British Asian Female Identities Through Arts Practices

Broad generalisations of British Asian women exist in relation to their cultural identity. Often described as subservient (Ahmed, 2020), my study uses arts practice to critically question the associations of cultural perceptions for British Asian women. Avtar Brah's research will be a starting point. She states that the social reality of Asian women's lives in Britain is constituted around a complex articulation of the economic, political, and cultural modalities which mark the interrelationship between 'race', class, ethnicity, and gender (Brah, 1987). As a British Asian woman my research will draw on the growing body of research around the field of autoethnography. Through raising questions about intersectional feminism and belonging (Anitha, 2018), my practice based methodologies will also explore how British Asian artists -including Sutapa Biswas, Zarina Bhimji and Permindar Kaur-use self-reflexivity in their practice to
explore the performance of identities.

Cultural Dysphoria can be understood as the dissonance between the social expectations of an individual's cultural performance or identity, and their desired embodiment of that culture, or uncertainty about where they fit into existing cultural categories (Sharma, 2017). My research will examine this firstly as a conceptual model, exploring the nature of being to understand difference through cultural experience; secondly, as a material model, embodying experience of dissonance using the phenomenon of Cultural Dysphoria. I seek to answer two related questions:
- How can arts practice and theory articulate the performability (Butler, 2015; Hall, 2017) and complexities of intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989) British Asian female experience?
- As a form of dissonance related to identity formation, in what ways can "Cultural Dysphoria" be developed as a conceptual and material model to address discourses on art practice, intersectionality and autoethnography in relation to British Asian women (Ahmed, 2008; Chang H, 2008)?

The research will draw upon my own practice as an established artist. I will use sculpture, performance and film building upon my previous research and the autoethnographic approaches used on my Masters (distinction). The MA resulted in a publication and film, The Anthropology of the Self (2020), which won the Inaugural AIS award 2020 and was showcased at the AIS festival in Leicester. My Masters' Final Major Project was a series of artworks that tested and embodied the concept of Cultural Dysphoria and won the Tate Liverpool Award 2020. I will also draw on the networks through my commissions with Coventry Biennial and Ikon Gallery for the benefit of this PhD.