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irak special

This experience was when I first realized my skills as an artist have Goldsmiths. After I made a presentation he sounds from a woman in one of the rooms, 3-4
the power to interact across boundaries creating an empathetic slipped his card to me saying “I want to bring of them would barge into the room, all beating
engagement. By acknowledging the Grandfather in the painting, I you to Calcutta.” Bhaskar was doing research on the man at once. It is a women’s community. The
acknowledged the whole family. I see them and they see me. Posing is sex workers. He asked me to paint their portrait NGO was corrupt. It was amazing to me that for
not a passive activity. As the portrait artist and the sitter stare at each giving him a good amount of time to interview women that made so little money performing the
other, scanning over and over again for hours, sight becomes a form the women while I painted. I agreed. This is the act of intercourse, there were vultures circling at
through which to know each other. Creating this experience between first opportunity I had to work with a scholar all times to get a piece of that tiny money.
us minimized our differences. It was many years later when I began the and understand just how valuable art making
position at Nanyang technological University I picked up this thread can be as a research methodology. Most of the women hated men. Shikha was born
in Southeast Asia using my creative skills to navigate my status as a in the brothel so she had a different experience.
foreigner. We planned the trip but just before the date She was never betrayed and sold to the brothel
Bhaskar could not come. Instead he arranged his by a husband or neighbor at a very young age
In Singapore I began to use my skills as an artist in collaboration with friend an artist and scholar Amitava Malakar, 11 to 13 years. This is the story of most of the
different scholars. I discovered that portrait painting was very effective Malu for short, to work with me in the brothel. women at that time. Their family in the village
in breaking barriers when scholars are doing research in ethnic For the first meeting, he set-up a night where barely had the means to survive. They were told
communities. By the way, an artist always pays their model unless it we would meet a certain sex worker who he there was a job in the city. Their families couldn’t
is a commission or they are giving the painting as a gift. Communities though could possibly organize our project. feed them, therefore they let them go. Or they
need support so the money from modelling is very welcome. The She would need to organize all the women that married them at that young age. Instead they
community sets the price. Usually the community thinks of themselves we would paint each day. Malu said she was an were brought to a brothel where if it was known
as the one who performs labor not the Senior Lecturer from a university amazing cook so we would try to arrange that back in their village that they had lived and
in Singapore. Often they are an agricultural society along with selling she would also prepare lunch for us each day. worked in a brothel they would not be accepted
traditional crafts to tourists. But after watching me sweat in a refugee Because I had no idea about the social context back into the family. Consequentially unaccepted
site or inside a sticky brothel every day for two weeks, we have another of the brothel, there was so much more she had in society they stay in the brothel. Their lives
common ground: labor, and my labor is focused on them. We are in to navigate to making our project happen that I are full of sadness and in turn depression. That
this project together. The entire community gathers around, usually was unaware of. The first night, Malu brought a is what I found going back 15 years later and
seeing the person posing in a new role, as the center of attention. The few beers interpreted between us all and we had drawing some of the same women I had known
painting is the reason for our encounter. We stare at each other. It’s a little party in Shikha’s room. Shikha and I hit in 2008. In 2008 every woman put on her saree
a process of recognition and identification. I’m out of my safe space it off well. Of course they wanted to know why I to be painted. In 2023 only one did. They didn’t
and enter unfamiliar spaces of the community. Usually the sitter will wasn’t married. We all agreed when I told them care what they looked like. There were only a
prepare and get dressed up as they want to be seen for their portrait. men were big problems! When they asked me few children. Most of the same women were in
about my last boyfriend, I told them a story of this same brothel. Their children were off on
Sarah Schuster explains about my artwork: One remarkable property how he fell head first into a well and was impaled their own or very frequently told me they had
of our vision is that what we gaze upon is drawn to look back at us, so by the deer antlers at the bottom of the well. He died of alcoholism or something else. Many of
as the painter looks she draws the sitter to look back and both engage in lived. They took this to mean that it happened to the women now just waiting to die. Others were
the process and experience of the other. In the end, the portrait is neither him because of me. They said men should stay doing well.
artist or subject, but both and something new. (Schuster, S. 2019) away from me because I’ll put a curse of bad luck
on them, such as what happened to my ex. They place men in three categories, takers: take
Through observation and conversation I come to know something of all your money, eaters: eat all your food and
the sitter. As the portrait develops I discover parts of the model within I was in the brothel in 2008 for a month, not givers: give and take care of the women. Out
myself, similarities that then highlight our differences. I come to every day but I spent a lot of time there. I saw of the eighteen women I painted this year 4
know the model through relationship and the painting is what we are the good the bad and the ugly. The good was the described having lives with a giver. They were
together…it is something new and never complete. Our relationship humanity between the women. At that time they basically happy. Three of those the man had
becomes a third entity, unfixed but connected to our encounter and all had young children and took care of each recently died but they had not had to work in the
then this takes on an endless sequence of relationships each time the other’s children from watching them to feeding sex trade for many years. He provided for them.
painting is viewed. them as their own. They would be jumping Now they are making money by renting their
around me while I made the paintings and rooms by the hour, to younger women living
You are also participating in quite an unusual project: giving voices drawings. I had to work hard to concentrate. I outside the brothel. Their husbands lost their job
and a picture to some of the most forgotten and disparaged women brought them markers and paper, and yarn for or is an alcoholic, they have 2-3 kids and need to
in society, the prostitutes. Could you tell us a little more about this some of the women who wanted to knit. feed them. These young women as the sole bread
project, and how you got involved? winners, choosing as their best option to work
It was fifteen years ago 2008 when I met Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay, a The women protected each other. They always left in a brothel as a means to feed their families was
cultural theorist from Calcutta and teaching at University of London their doors unlocked so that if they heard fearful a very bad sign to me about the state of society.

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