Swati Khurana and Jaishri Abichandani

00:04 My name is Swati Corona. I'm 38. Today is May 31st 2014 and I'm in the storycorps booth in Foley Square New York City and my relationship to chase trees that she's a friend and a colleague.

00:22 I am Jace real B10 Donnie. I'm 44 years old. And today is the 31st of May and we're at Foley Square storycorps location with SWAT coronavirus who is a friend and of one of the founding members of Saucy along with myself.

00:43 I guess today will going to have a conversation about the 19 years that we've known each other and some of the work that we've done together.

00:53 I remember meeting you in 95 at The Saga party. And yeah, that was 19 years old South Asian lesbian gay Association party at the gay and lesbian center.

01:09 And 13th Street, West Village

01:14 Yeah, that was a fun moment for me. I was in college. I was at Columbia and I had had it. I don't think I'd really found my community in college, which I might sound strange cuz that's often where people I guess really find their communities and but being a New York I had found out they're all these other very exciting things happening, you know downtown with women's organizations of gay and lesbian organizations and somehow I don't even remember. How about I saw a flyer for a party and I remember it was funny because it was called a ball and I didn't think I really knew what that meant and I wore a very like if I were a kind of a floral printed chiffon dress to it and I got there early and I was the only woman for about two an hour and a half two hours and all the men there was so nice they were so excited to see me. This is

02:14 Worried all these women are going to come for you to hang out with him fun in the Juicery and her friends came in that was you know, I felt like that was a good initiation into the larger scene in New York.

02:28 So why don't we I mean we could talk a little bit about just making art being an artist and the kinds of work that I guess he says J Tree is the founder. So I'll see what you did before Saucier you came you live in India from most of your childhood, you know, when you started to photograph and all of that. So I moved here when I was 14 and a half and I moved from a small town in India primarily where it was near the adenta queso the art that I was surrounded by was like second and first century BC art and that was my you know closest encounter with it. So when I moved here and I went to art classes in high school and college there was such a huge kind of sense of

03:19 Disruption I don't even know what to call it alienation, of course because Contemporary Art was so completely far removed in New York from what I had understood and experiences art in India and trying to find my way through it at that point was just too intimidating. And so I took two photography because I knew it wasn't even something. I did an undergraduate. I took every possible art class and undergraduate but once I graduated and got my bachelor's is when I went out and bought a camera and started to take pictures and it was a way that I felt like I could communicate with everyone without the visual language hanging people up on what I wanted to say.

04:09 Because what I produce at that point was just you know, so informed by Indian art and aesthetic and it still is and I've come full circle to making the type of work that I did initially that no one understood. But when I first took to formally making art it was through photography because it seemed like a democratic kind of medium that you know, I could shoot by people and it was still within a technical language. That was understood and

04:40 Then it was about you know, 10 years of doing photography which took me to realize ain't that a frame a single frame wasn't enough and what I wanted to say really needed to go beyond that and to break Beyond it into sculpture and installation and paintings. It's been a really long journey in terms of making work. What about yourself Democratic? Because my first I hit the two had taken, you know, quite a few art classes drawing classes in college and in high school and I didn't really find it to express anything that I was interested in, you know, the still lives, you know, all of those kind of formal exercises. And so when I met Jay stream and I was in college with my partner the time while we had started making documentaries and it's interesting, I think that I was drawn to video while you were trying to fill them and most of us aren't really using that now and I think for me,

05:40 You know, I was a fish out of water and some ways but then I was in a different water and I realized there's something fascinating happening and maybe that happened to you to where I felt that. I wanted to record some of the the people some of the scenes in the community. And so my first two major project for actually documentaries about the first one was on some fries. I'm mad and second was on DJ rack up at about you know, kind of key players in the Salvation Progressive Arts queer scene. And and then I think like Jace right I realized that I wanted to explore things more formally. I wanted to go outside of the parameters. So that's interesting. Maybe we can talk about because we both are making work before Saucy. So what were you doing and Saucy again is the South Asian women's creative Collective s a w c c

06:36 Where were you showing your work or sharing your work or meeting artist before this organization? Well, Chelsea was really because there was no such space in New York before that. I had seen salvation performance happen in San Francisco with Chaat. I had been to Desh pardesh as you had in Toronto for those ten years that it did happen and was pivotal and it seemed absurd. Toronto and you know the Bay Area had these kind of organized South Asian art movements and New York didn't because we had the same critical mass. If not more than San Francisco and Toronto and the spaces at that point. We'll just pure the active space is if you remember that was sucky. That was Saga that was salvation AIDS action Cav unit Committee Against on television violence affiliation Americans for equality, but none of those faces

07:36 I heart ice art and art was only a tool for their mission for social justice when it was permissible or useful, but it was never their mission or their focus and in I think December or fall of 96 Jetta City girl had put together a benefit for a sucky for South Asian women in unlike 40 some small space in 42nd street and she had gathered together a really wonderful sell on of women presenters and that was quite inspirational for me to attend as well. And so when I did think about Saucy it was just you know, instinctive and natural to have it be a primarily found in his face because the spaces in which we were working with in at that point is community organizer or so participants Shapers were either family or queer spaces.

08:36 You know personally as someone who's a survivor of all types of kind of violence, those are the spaces that still feel safe to me or those queer and feminist phases in order as much as you know, I dropped patriarchal spaces. So, you know, the initial impetus to have Saucy be a feminist space that just prioritize artwork and brought women together due to not just him and I felt like they were so many motivations one was, you know to have a space to talk about the work of women like to throw David krulee which we all found to be quite problematic, but it was really visible. So there's no space to actually talk about those nuances within the work that was being produced. There was no space to talk about the references that we were being asked to discard in our work which were South Asian based because they weren't understood here. There was no space to talk about that alienation does no

09:36 Space to actually create generate a dialogue and push ourselves further and critique our cells and support each other. So all of those things were my my kind of motivation to make it happen, you know, and I think I reached out to like 60 women for the first meeting and 15 showed up and no

09:57 Movie was one of them.

10:01 Well, I think for me I was I was a little bit younger. So I was really leaving college and then looking for my life beyond college and I think I remember that first meeting and I wasn't at the first meeting because I was actually at the salsa conference in South Asian Student Association conference. And again, I would say in addition to organizing spaces probably academic spaces supported our task or gave us a platform specially organised frankly more by South Asian students of weed. CA faculty, right? They weren't crying faculty back then so was student organizations even done some projects and that shot a cover for a chi magazine at Columbia. And so I think many of us were I don't think that any of us thought that the general art world. We don't even know how to access it. Yeah. We did not just know how to access it. We really didn't know how to relate to the dialogue that was happening in the art world. I'm in now. I'm like told I dunno identity politics was all right.

11:01 In the art world in the nineties and these huge interventions happened at the Whitney biennial 1 wean you off is that you know, what would the Asian American Artist provided a space for us to come together the whole notion of like what was happening in the art World At Large was something that I think all of us felt shut out of very much don't you think definitely I mean, I remember thinking even within the South Asian and Indian galleries, it seemed like the mostly artists were from India still, you know, they're in training from there and they were also making a different kind of work than what we were doing. Although I do think that's changed on 2014. I do think that we can relate a lot more to our peers in India, right? But back in the 90s. I felt like I didn't even know. Where do you show your film? Where do you hang your heart? And how does that happen? No, I want to pick up in something. You said maybe little bit off-topic. Yeah, we can relate a lot more to the work that they are making now I was

12:01 They can relate to our work any better cuz if when will the ways in which we investigate identity is irrelevant for them if you know what I mean, I think Jace you can probably speak to this a lot better really. She has one foot in both. I got came from a day when I was too and I really just have my younger cousins to relate to and none of them are artists and I but I think I think you should act exactly right. I think we have a unique position in the diaspora and I think the people that you know who are from the diaspora that get supported in South Asia are either one people who've achieve success in Western terms here like shahzia sikander, right whose work still references those

12:49 Traditions, but she's enormously successful or people like y'all many who actually evacuate that position to occupy a whole other modern Exposition and you know, they feel like who look I can be, you know, somehow I can prove my contemporary modern nature as a Indian citizen by liking this world and turning my back on thousands of years additional work, you know, there's a really kind of interesting but I think intellectual split that happens. I think we're getting away might be a little bit. So I wanted to ask you

13:32 What are some of the key moments to remember with Saucy over the years and why the first one to two years we used to meet in the basement of the location of the Asian American Writers worshipfulness on st. Mark's place and we were underneath the Gap the store The Gap that an actual and it was seen a brown carpeting. I just feel like I can remember the bookshelf so well and we were hosted the first Friday of the month. I've something like that and it was the center of I think our our lives are social calendar and and the meetings were open to South Asian women only this is important because it was important for me. I was engaged and actually got married within the first year Saucy and I found it. So important for me to have my own space as a woman and my own, you know, just my own kin.

14:32 And I think many of us felt that way regardless of whatever where we were and so I remember those meetings and I remembered then just spilling into hanging out afterwards and then really kind of took The Weeknd the whole weekend was dedicated to you know, kind of recovering from the Friday night meeting and then I remember very clearly, collage that was about a year since 1998. It was our first public event. Meaning that anyone is a fundraiser it was five or ten dollars anyone could come and I think there were 400 people there are at least as many as we could squeeze into every nook and cranny people got there and it was sold out of 15 minutes on the corner and I think that we have kind of created. This was a bus or an Intrigue that there were these things that were happening on Friday nights and other people can it come and so remember the men like lurking outside the meetings waiting for them to finish.

15:32 I'll actually be able to hang out with us and wanting to know what it happened and who had presented and you know, all of those things for me that I mean, I'd say that was really amazing an interesting and I'm trying to think I remember our one of our first exhibitions was at I say it one of our first like white wall Gallery exhibitions get me wrong with so this was in 2001. It was the spring right? So it's before September 11th. And that was the first time one of these Indian galleries. We had offered a proposal and the show is curated by Rina Banerjee and it was the first time I think we had seen or I had seen Saucy work kind of on white walls with labels in a gallery. It wasn't a cafe. It wasn't a store. It wasn't a restaurant. It wasn't a student center and there was

16:32 Opening and I just remember feeling that there's a I knew we had made postcards before but there's something about that moment to that felt that we had a tiny little maybe half a toe into this art Harold makes sense. And what about you? What were some key moments for you?

16:53 There are few. I remember that meeting on chitra's rooftop really well.

17:03 There was something so magical about that meeting Blvd. In fact, I danced football Roshes dance company and something about like this white wall and them in their catalog costumes and sunset in Brooklyn and hearing all those sounds coming up from the streets while these like three women like put on this phenomenal private performance for us, you know, I still remember that and loved that moment so much and then like I remember our 10th anniversary show 2000s Tremont exit art and

17:47 Yeah, that was a great great and did not who's not with so many people support us in and out of the sausage comedian glycogen at Ingram ingerman & from exit art and the rooftop meeting was at chitra Ganesh has rooftop who is did also a very Chi Saucy member and really fantastic artists.

18:16 Maybe we can talk a little bit about.

18:21 Being so J Street has a lot of hats. I mean, let's just you know, you were really the founder should call the initial meeting an artist in her own right and then a curator and an organizer can maybe you can talk a little bit about all those different hats you were and whether whether it was braided in a way that always that worked in and in a time that there's a conflict for just you individually as an artist. Oh, yeah. I've been

18:55 I think the conflict continues, you know, I'm in like

19:00 The Queens museum I was initially involved as an artist and then I got hired as a director of public events. And one of the things I got to do was put on fatal love South Asian American art now and those are really Bittersweet moment to not be able to put my work in that show and be able to like put all of your work in there and the years that I work there to like create that space over and over again for you for Tetra for y'all money for 9 a.m. For Sarah and see all of them gets so much success and critical Acclaim and does not have that happen for me and not be able to access that space anymore. So I quit that was like the biggest conflict. I think you know the most kind of difficult.

19:53 You know time and

19:59 You know it I really enjoy curating very much.

20:07 Because it's to me an extension off my artistic practice and what my larger Endeavor with goes beyond the objects that I make and like, you know to create institutions or support structures likes bossy. Really interrupt and punch holes in the art world or you know, make ourselves visible and make our voices.

20:30 Not just understood but to provide a real complexity and Nuance in what's being prevent presented. So no one artist has the burden of representation of an entire Community but a community can be represented by 10 different Nuance voices were saying different things you don't and those are some of the things have really enjoyed about curating in about

21:01 Thinking about things like I did a trio of feminist South Asian and Iranian women's exhibitions and it was very interesting to follow that trajectory and see what what is it that women imagine when they are given the space to think about the future without restriction. And what does that look like in all of those kinds of Explorations or something that you can do through curating in a much richer way than you can do on your own practice cuz you're not limited by your own mind and your own production.

21:38 I think that is and I think that's one thing that I think stassi is really done is create a conversation in the dialogue that we've had amongst, you know ourselves as a j should mention that where there were maybe a few visible voices. We could be really have a conversation about them. But then also add to the larger conversation.

22:04 Yeah, sorry.

22:09 What about you? Cuz I know you also wear so many hats and how do you approach these multiple ways of creating and how do you think about it all was a founding member and then we had a board. I was on the board and then and then came back on the board for a few years and I do think it is definitely challenging being an organizer / curator and also being an artist when you work with an Arts organization because I do think that there can sometimes be a conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest and but I do think that in terms of the way Saucy works, it's really

22:52 Ideally in a it works in a very organic way, but in very comfortable way, I mean, even when I was a board member, I sometimes submitted work to shows that didn't get in and you know, I also help with a fundraiser wasn't just that if you were involved you are selective cuz they're in my experience are always with someone from the outside and someone who had more curatorial organizational expertise within an institution and then they would work with Saucy artist. So I think that that has been really helpful for me. I think probably the thing that influences and splits my intention is that you let your kid. I'm a teacher and I'm an artist and sometimes I have to

23:34 Think about you know, when I do my artwork, I am obviously very interesting ideas. I think we many of us are we're not just ripped formless. We're really trying to talk about ideas and how to not

23:45 Overload the work for me anyway with with ideas that might as well be might just be you know, a curriculum that I'm thinking about you. How to separate how to separate that mentally for me is challenging but I think because my quote-unquote day job. I'm like, you know, Jay shree who's really work with an Arts organization the community organizations. I've worked. I'm outside as an educator. I I don't think I've had that same I've been able to I think separate the two a little bit more but still mentally it can be intermixed.

24:22 I did one thing that's also kind of interesting is that we both return to what we were doing before. Yeah, you're going to these I don't like caves and talking about your goddess this and that kind of form and for me, I've actually gone back to what I was doing a long time ago as well with going to writing so maybe you can talk a little about your current work and maybe the bridge and where you have a ride there sure are so the first sculptures that I made was do hollow out a camera and turn them into altars and Shrine. If you may remember so just took in the object that I was most familiar with and got it and turned it into the thing that you know always moves me because of the end of the day, you know often as as problematic as it tumbles are and as religion is the way that I feel when I walk into the temple and I see those displays like I rarely feel that in contemporary art

25:22 And to me that is what I do. I make my work from at this point because that's a pain that moves me the most so from the authors that moved to making Shiva lingam side of sex toys and then from the making the Shiva lingam, so I was kind of using appropriated found objects to make goddesses and none of it was satisfying enough. So I just started to make them out of clay and the ones

25:50 I started with I'm Cindy from a place in Pakistan that I don't have access to and the first when you learn about South Asian art, the first place to start is send with more engines are on how to pass is like 5th Century BC civilization. And that's the first artwork that you find in India is from there and I had started making the series of a hundred Knight sculptures that were inspired by the artifacts that were found in the Indus Valley in Monticello and how to buff and specifically females figures that that whether they was standing or seated they very oddly and then without legs in this very vaginal formed and it look somewhere like sometimes it looks like a tongue. Sometimes it looks like a vagina but it's abstracted weather upper part of the body is rendered quite in a detailed.

26:50 Play in the bottom half of the figure is just abstracted into this huge and large vagina and the doll Forum really took me because becoming a mother I think completely changed my work as well. And I was able to embed that change into those cultures and there's a surgery that I had last year where this huge mass was removed from my back and the sculptures that I made the first I think two dozen of them were off that mask that was removed from my body.

27:29 I felt like a really direct connection between

27:33 Everything about who I was and what I was making, you know from my family's history to my considering feminism is my religion, you know, everything comes together in that work for me.

27:54 I've made $75 so far and next week, I think on a hanger made the first one online, June 8th or something. So it's going to be a year that I've been working in the series. I didn't think that I think

28:11 Well, whatever. It's been a great journey, and I'm so glad it's not doubt as a religion cuz I think we had both or I had actually let the sauce aborted tissue was still on a few years ago when that, you know, very Infamous gang rape on the Telly bus happened in December 16th 2000.

28:39 I don't know where we have to factor 12 involved in working within Saucy and just like the New York Community with articulating our anger or frustration with the reality of women in public spaces within India dictionary both, you know where they're at. But I seen too many of us really do see it as a space and I think that that I think that's another thing where it which was interesting. Also in terms of coming full circle is that Saucy came out of these extremely active the spaces on many of us were involved with his use around either anti-racist violence and domestic violence and then we kind of cat piano catalyzed again to come together with freedom Safety Town if you want to say anything about that. Yeah, I think Freedom safety. No was like just about

29:40 The top three most memorable things that I've done with Saucy ever, you know, it ended up being a major intervention with

29:54 A hundred people involved then you made the signs and you know, we came up with movements Dance Movement sequence along with body. They said they're dancer choreographer and it was really like 4 or 5 exhaust and board members who came together with Peridot because we just felt so compelled to do something to put our bodies in an outside public space to protest what had happened and do really make it visible. And so we chose the Indian Consulate and we chose Republic Day Indian Republic Day for it's very significant so that we could disrupt their kind of official celebration of this fucked up Republic. That is India.

30:44 You know, there was just this moment. I think we're out of the hundred people. That was there at least.

30:54 Half of those women knew each other stories of abuse

30:58 And no words needed to be sad to each other because all we had to do is look in each other's eyes and bear witness to the stories that when you and there was some point at which in that hour of like shouting and chanting and screaming and drumming.

31:18 I'm dancing where those is complete moment of Life transformation and katarsis word went from like the pain in the rain to actual joy that we were there and we were alive and you know, we were in Sisterhood together and that we could do this, you know, and I think that was more healing to me than yours of therapy frankly, you know.

31:49 I think it's probably spawn something. I mean, I know it's fun something. So Saucy and a lot of other women and a lot of connections were remade.

32:01 And that moment how about you? Yeah, I think that was a very I was thinking actually that I have been to so many. I mean I know you are too so many rallies in the 90s. I mean, I can't even remember them all and

32:19 I was thinking that that was such a I mean, other than that I think the top I got to see when she touched us and I think a haunted house for weeks and we had to go back into therapy is from where I was completely I mean, I remember it was over before Christmas and New Years. It was just a kind of the most depressing holidays to me. It's almost felt like the way we felt after September 11th in a way like everything felt different to know I couldn't really celebrate it was it was a gray kind of somber mood and I think I was remembering all these activists protest and thinking if we had more art exactly, you know, we had we had the music we had a dull player we had on choreography. We had I made some Letterpress signs. We had some other visual art. We had them even everyone wearing the same colors. There was an aesthetic. Yeah, there was aesthetic there was dancers music and I almost felt like if we

33:18 I had more of that I probably would have been you know, a kind of activist longer like I so tired quote. If you won't let me down that your Revolution. I don't want to be there or something like a Gloria I got exactly and I think that that's kind of why we found it Saucy isn't we had obviously going to strong commitment to social justice, but we needed to replenish ourselves. Frankly. Yes. It is really exhausting doing this work and if there is not reciprocity and if you're not being nourished, then you can keep doing it and I think also it's the idea that Saucy does fundamentally bring together Kindred Spirits, right? So there's some faces that we knew them that I hadn't seen in 20 years in a wide variety in between and I think that

34:12 This really mattered. Why do you think we've lasted this long?

34:17 I think we've I don't know this really good question. I think they're still in need. Maybe I think we come from I always say that you don't Indian Americans and salvation Marcus come from at least two patriarchal cultures patriarchal in different ways. And I think that I think we always are going to need feminism. I don't see how we wouldn't and I think that there still a need for I think an artistic Community. I'm even if artists are you able to break through some of the Gatekeepers? I still think that the conversation nourishes them. Why do you think we're still around?

35:01 I imagine it's the same answer really is because we were still needed. I'm in there other, you know, Silly technical things like we've always been a small and lean organization and not depended much on outside funding and so that has helped us survive in some ways, you know.

35:27 Yeah, that means entirely almost, you know entirely or volunteer run every now and then we'll have a part-time staff person. That's so much labor is done by the working board. We've never had a nonworking board and then, you know, we pulled in outside curators and people to organize projects. And so it's been more than incubator. Has it been really a big organization.

35:57 What would you do differently? I don't know what I'm trying to think. I mean in terms of me or saucy.

36:09 I'm talking about all the work. I think that it might have been a might have been nice to find a balance. I think when you were on when one is on the board and one is an active board member, there is so much work overwhelming overwhelming and I think a lot of us over there because we are artists and we're creative people and it does take a toll on our creative work and I think if there could be if we could keep Authority as you could be lean and still in incubator and still initiate projects and be exciting and then still allow for people to eat at work and give their labor in a way in which they can still do what else is important to them. But then you know, maybe the Lord is working perfectly well with just new people coming in and I'm not really sure because it's it for me at a certain time. It's exactly what I needed. What would you do differently? I think I would Define membership more clearly.

37:09 From the beginning that is the one thing I feel like

37:13 Really on one level it kept Saucy as such an amorphous kind of space that.

37:28 Accountability was a little bit lost. I felt and not from the board in terms of how it administered but between board members and members and board because if there was clearly defined memberships in expectations and rolled then I think things could have been really different thread that membership is just fit a self-identification. There's never been a monetary membership fee a form or registration labor exchange. Yeah, registering or anything like that. You know, it's benefited for 17 years the membership at the Lord has always benefited from the work done by the board, but there is so many ways in which it could have supported the board and I cannot work happened that that I feel like

38:26 Can happen you know, you know.

38:32 Any advice we give to Young Artists or other I mean South Asian women artists or other kind of artist who might feel like they are creative people who might feel like they're on the margins of various artists. Which means I would say probably just a couple of things one would be do find Community immediately so that you know, and you are completely informed about what your peers are making.

39:03 And you can then push your own practice forward and really the other thing would be.

39:14 Just try to tune in in a way that to themselves and what that means is really do.

39:23 Really be centered in your practice. It's so easy to think that making art is about making connections and networks in this and that really what you need to do is have a very very deep relationship with your practice and with your art and then anything else can come out of that you go to make good work. The only way to do it is to just be there all the time for your work.