Oct 17 2023

Roots that Hover above the Soil: A Case of Nonbelonging in the Subcontinent

Feminisms Lunch Lectures

October 17, 2023

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Location

1700 SSB & Zoom

Address

1200 W. Harrison St., Suite 1700, Chicago, IL 60607

Promotional poster: At the top is a black-and-white photo of two people standing near a sign that says,

After how many generations can we call a land a home?

Join us for a talk by UIC MFA student Jovita Alvares exploring how colonial erasure, migration, the India-Pak Partition of 1947, and present-day state violence continue to affect notions of identification and belonging within marginalized communities of the Subcontinent. Her research focuses mainly on the Christian Goan diaspora community of Karachi, Pakistan, who are an ethnoreligious minority in the country. As a group of people, they have continued to face violence, be it during the Portuguese colonial rule of Goa that lasted for 450 years, or even presently, as a religious minority that makes up less than two percent of the country’s population. Despite this, what keeps them moving forward?

The answers, though abstract, lie somewhere within the vernacular archive. By studying family photographs, there is an exploration of the various factors, traditions, and rituals that possibly keep communities going. This research juxtaposes vernacular, state, and colonial archives as a way of bringing stories of the subaltern from the edges of history to the forefront.

Food, Safety, and Accessibility:

  • Masks are required for in-person attendees.
  • Lunch will be available for takeaway.
  • Building and suite accessibility info is available on our website.
  • Captions will be enabled on Zoom.

Please contact us with any questions or access requests: wlrc@uic.edu or (312) 413-1025.

 

Registration has now closed.

 

Date posted

Oct 4, 2023

Date updated

Oct 17, 2023

Speakers

Jovita Alvares | MFA Student in Studio Arts | UIC School of Art and Art History

Jovita Alvares (b.93) is a Pakistani artist with a BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi. Coming from an ethnic minority diaspora in Pakistan, Alvares has always found herself drawn to narratives of those that have been underrepresented and ignored within the larger landscape of both history and present-day society. While through her previous works, she found herself following stray dogs and the bougainvillea plants that struggle to survive through the rigidity of Karachi’s urban environment, her exploration has now moved closer towards the marginalized community she grew up in and through her recent research, she has been interested in how the colonization of the Subcontinent continues to affect notions of identity and belonging within ethnoreligious minority communities such as her own. Alvares graduated with the title of Valedictorian and several awards for academic excellence including a Distinction in her thesis from her Alma mater. She received the Imran Mir Art Prize for emerging artists in 2017. In 2022, she was awarded the USEFP Fulbright Scholarship and is presently pursuing her MFA in Studio Arts from the School of Art and Art History, UIC.