Mixed Blood Portraits

Mixed Blood Portraits is a collaborative project between Anglo-Indian-American artist Neil Chowdhury and Afro-Caribbean-American artist Françoise Duresse. Mr. Chowdhury is currently teaching at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, NY and Ms. Duresse is currently teaching at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

We seek to explore and come to terms with some of the issues created by the diverse mix of our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as well as to connect with others who share these experiences. In this rapidly globalising era, a growing number of individuals can trace our heritage to a mix of cultures and traditions, transcending simple and outmoded definitions of racial, ethnic or cultural identity. This situation creates a need for these individuals to form new identities while grappling with lingering cultural stereotypes left over like a bad hangover from the cocktail party of colonial times. Our work arises as a response to the cultural assumptions and expectations of others, and celebrates the synthesis of cultural forces that form our respective identities out of complex multi-ethnic and cultural origins.  We are often confounded when confronted by the ubiquitous checkboxes on job applications and government forms that are supposed to divide the races into a few neat categories. Our work is a reminder that for many, these categories are no longer meaningful.

We will juxtapose documentary-style video interviews in which individuals of mixed origins describe our choices in the process of forming our own cultural identities. Individuals from a mixed cultural background often have to design our own identities, choosing from amongst various influences to find a way to fit into our environment. These choices result from a struggle to form our own separate individuality synthesized from the influences of parents’ cultures as well as the culture in which we find ourselves living. We plan to tell these stories by montaging our own video self-portraits with those of others from mixed cultural backgrounds. We will recruit participants through postcard mailers, a web site, and personal networking. We are requesting participants to provide a short, videotaped dialog discussing the process of how they have created and come to terms with their cultural identities. They are asked what cultural symbols, practices, and traditions they identify with, and from where these influences originated. We want to know how they chose what to assimilate and what to reject out of the complex mix of lifestyles, values, and religions available to people of mixed racial and cultural descent. Participants are also asked to supply photographs of themselves. These photographs will be used as the basis for a screen-printed portrait collage depicting the subject surrounded by the cultural icons of their own choice, representing the mix of influences that make up their self-created identity. We will exhibit photo-screen print collages together with projected video segments in an installation format to emphasize the diversity and complexity of contemporary mixed blood identities, belying common and easy assumptions of cultural and racial origins.

We are people strangely united by the multiplicity of our origins, faced with a conscious task that most people take for granted.  Our work is an attempt to describe the process of the formation of individual identities from mixed origins. The components of this work will provide an open narrative dialogue on cultural identity. We want to explore the hybrid cultures that are created by a mix of cultural influences. While the respective backgrounds of the project directors share the term “Indian”, it is worth remembering that this common appellation derives from a case of mistaken identity on the part of European colonizers. Facing this sort of mistaken assumption about one’s origins is a common experience for people with heterogeneous backgrounds. Our work is an attempt to expose many of these mistaken assumptions- to begin to define our identities on our own terms, as well as to give others the platform to begin a discussion of these issues. We want to celebrate and explore the hybrid cultures that are created by a mix of diverse influences. Ultimately, we would like to transcend the world of assumptions based on appearance, as well as that of art for its own sake in order to create work that will do a bit to help to end racism, and to increase the tolerance, appreciation and understanding of human diversity.