Cultural Dysphoria: British South Asian Women Artists (BAWA) Beyond Binaries

This practice-based research project explores the effectiveness of Cultural Dysphoria as both a methodology and theory. In 2017, non-binary scholar and artist Ayesha Sharma wrote a blog post expressing their concerns about their reality of projected cultural identities. Cultural Dysphoria, according to Sharma, is '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'. This PhD thesis specifically focuses on artists of British South Asian descent (BAWA) and examines how cultural identity is performed in art, referring to the gap between how they are expected to express their cultural identity and how that person actually feels about their identity.

Cultural Dysphoria in this thesis is examined in two ways. First, I consider it as a methodological approach through my own art practice, which I describe as an intuitive speculative art practice. This means I create art based on my feelings and instincts, allowing me to explore complexities without needing to explain everything. Embracing dissonance allows me to embrace the complexity and nuance of making those artworks. Explaining meaning and contexts reduces the work and often does a disservice to both the artist and the works' wider roles and concerns. Key methods of this approach include auto-theory, DIY art, and care-work in socially engaged art. Second, the thesis analyses the artworks created using these methods within an art historical context and alongside other BAWA artists. This helps to understand Cultural Dysphoria not only as a methodology for exploring uncertainty but also as a theoretical framework for examining the experiences of BAWA artists.