Getting very tired of seeing brown illustrators depict brownness exclusively via saris, jhoomars, bindis and henna, or some digital art with edited mughal era miniature paintings doin ~Modern~ things

We need to ask the question: who are these for? What gaze do these images serve? I think often times brown artists who are on the (usually naive yet well intentioned) quest to highlight their brown identity end up on the very slippery slope of self exoticising their own work

It’s a dangerous kind of orientalism! Representing the East through the lens of the West. How has the Coloniser got us so fucked up that we are unable to directly grasp the hands of our own aesthetic without reenacting the violence of our oppression also?

As POC artists it’s a position we find ourselves in often. What’s worked best for me is to stop labelling my work as “brown/desi” etc. Don’t reduce your art to the nearest binary. To the most Instagrammable motif. Dig deeper and find something you can truly attach meaning to!