Adivasi and Dalit Futurism

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Formations
Adivasi and
Dalit Futurism:
Subash Thebe Limbu
and Osheen Siva
in Conversation

Thursday 20th October at 4pM BST

ABOUT THIS EVENT

In recent times, the rapidly changing socio-political, environmental, and technological changes have centralised focus on reimagining and reconfiguring futures. While the Futurism movement, which began in Italy and spread to other European countries, sought to cleave off from the past and prophesized exciting futures through new technologies, futurisms that emerged from the margins were motivated by different urges – to question Eurocentric ideas of progress, development, scientific rationality, and techno futures. Afrofuturism, Latinx Futurism, and different kinds of Subaltern Futurisms have imagined alternate futures through speculative art and fiction by firmly holding on to the past.

In the Indian subcontinent, artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva have conceptualised Adivasi Futurism and Tamil Dalit Futures respectively. This conversation will discuss how they utilise the anti-caste philosophy that guides their multimodal artwork. It will explore how the artists use speculative art to posit alternate futures that resist caste and privilege their identities. The conversation, moderated by Prof. K.A. Geetha and Priteegandha Naik will discuss Dalit and Adivasi futurism and the potential it offers to dream up new and equal futures.

This free, online-in conversation event with multimedia artists Subash Thebe Limbu and Osheen Siva is part of the Bonington Gallery’s Formations series, hosted in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre.

Osheen Siva is a multidisciplinary artist from Thiruvannamalai, currently based in Goa. Through the lens of surrealism, speculative fiction and science fiction and rooted in their Dalit and Tamil heritage, Siva imagines new worlds of decolonized dreamscapes, futuristic oasis with mutants and monsters and narratives of queer and feminine power. 

Subash Thebe Limbu is an indigenous artist from Yakthung (Limbu) Nation in eastern Nepal. He works with sound, film, music, performance, painting and podcast.
Subash has MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins (2016), BA in Fine Art from Middlesex University (2011), and Intermediate in Fine Art from Lalit Kala Campus, Kathmandu.
His works are inspired by socio-political issues, resistance and science/speculative fiction. Migration, climate change, and indigeneity or Adivasi Futurism as he calls it,  are recurring themes in his works.
He is based in Newa Nation (Kathmandu) and London.

K.A. Geetha is an Associate Professor the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Goa Campus, India Her research interests are Dalit writing, Post-Colonial literatures, Women Studies and Cultural studies. She has worked extensively on the literary production and reception of Tamil Dalit literature.

Priteegandha Naik has submitted her thesis on Dalit-futurism which discussed Dalit Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Science and Technology Studies. She and is currently working as a Research Associate at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Miss the live event? You can watch it on YouTube below!