Roo Dhissou’s Courses for Dis-Course(s) offered a visual feast for the eyes, presented in the open and airy Gallery One at Primary as part of their Nourishment programme. The aesthetic ‘vibe’ of the exhibition was reminiscent of the colourful and graphic decor that might be seen in a trendy millennial’s home or at an independent makers market. The walls, painted in a soft peachy tone, feature the twisting curves of a giant painted blue snake. The mural of the snake wrapped around the gallery, holding the contents and its observers in a sort of embrace, or perhaps offering a pathway to follow, tracing your way from the entrance to the opposite wall.
Within the space was a series of objects and furniture with clear associations to notions of home: a dinner table set with handmade tableware, a kitchenette, a tea trolley with serving trays and a manji – a traditional woven bed from South Asia also known as a charpai. Printed on the tea towels and hidden on the bottom of handmade terracotta cups was the quote ‘I am the sugar at the bottom of your chai tea latte’, a direct reference to the writings of Stuart Hall (‘I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea’) while the ceramic serving trays highlighted the medicinal properties of herbs and spices traditionally used in South Asian cuisine. The napkins replaced the typical ’Be you!’ or ‘Grow with the flow’ style of motivational lifestyle slogans from the aforementioned makers markets with Sara Ahmed quotes such as ‘Rolling eyes = feminist pedagogy.’ A speaker hidden from view played a playlist with bangers such as Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ or TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ along with folk songs popular in Punjab and tracks by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a popular Sufi and Ghazal singer and musician. The playlist was primarily compiled by Dhissou but also included tracks added by participants of the accompanying programme.
The exhibition was the second chapter of a larger project developed between Dhissou, Primary in Nottingham and GLOAM in Sheffield where it was first presented. The colourful and comfy aesthetics of the exhibition were underpinned by Dhissou’s practice and previous work engaging with dinners, food, gathering and community as well as her PHD research around the ethics and methods through which galleries and museums approach social engagement. In addition to the physical display in the gallery the project included a series of events and dinners hosted in the exhibition with a group of British South Asian women and non-binary Artists, selected from an open call. When describing the gatherings Dhissou said they were intended as ’a space to get together, eat and hang out away from fancy language.’
In a conversation with the artist following the close of the exhibition, Dhissou discussed some of the research and prompts for the dinners. One such prompt stemmed from the 2022 documentary Deconstructing Karen in which activists Regina Jackson and Saira Rao host a series of dinners, known as ‘Race to Dinner’, for wealthy white women to challenge and encourage them to deconstruct their own complicity in white supremacy. Many of the women who attend the dinners already consider themselves to be anti-racist or allies, but the guests are presented with ways in which unconscious behaviours or conditioning maintain their complicity in holding up systems of racist behaviour.
While both ‘Race to Dinner’ and Dhissou’s exhibition centre the dinner table as a gathering point, they vary in their approach. ‘Race to Dinner’ is focused on unpicking the unconscious racist tendencies of its guests in a bid to aid them in better utilising their position of privilege and networks to further this anti-racist work. However, the nature of the dinners can become confrontational, and the high entry fee is obviously inaccessible to many. Dhissou’s project, on the other hand, intended to create a space for British South Asian women to eat and discuss difficult topics, without the familial hierarchies that many may remember from their childhood dinner tables. As Dhissou reinforces in our conversation ’it’s not necessarily to challenge people, but to find a space where we can all be uncomfortable, and moan and complain and talk shit together.’
Today, there is a common tendency to classify groups of people in broad strokes in an imperfect attempt to ensure equity, such as in equality monitoring questionnaires, and this behaviour is pervasive both in our professional and social lives, and the digital echo chambers of social media. This practice does a disservice to true equality as it boils down wide, divergent cultures and peoples into homogenous groups. For Dhissou it was necessary to challenge the expectation that the gatherings were just about relating to each other; they were also about asking what it means to be South Asian. While the participants might share many commonalities, they also have many differences.
Reflecting on the motifs of the exhibition, in particular the depictions of the logo and mascot of the beloved biscuit brand Parle-G, one imagines that most people in the audience must have a favourite biscuit, one that holds a certain nostalgia or fond memories. For people of the South Asian diaspora this might be Parle-G, whilst for the White British – in the parlance of equality questionnaires – it may be custard creams or bourbons. Perhaps a different way of looking at commonality is not to focus on a specific biscuit, but rather focus on the nostalgia or fondness people have for biscuits as a common factor. Those are the shared commonalities that bring us together.
In this vein, the final event taking place during the exhibition’s run was a Citrus Sharing session that utilised citrus fruits as a tool to prompt participant discussion while creating labels for bottles of lemon soda. The workshop sought to constitute a non-hierarchical setting that presented an opportunity to find common ground through the verbal offerings of the participants. While the event was held by artist Abbas Zahedi and Ed Taylor, co-founder of soft drinks company Square Root Soda, it was established by Zahedi that ‘this is a space that is made by all of us here. ‘As well as Dhissou and the regular group of diners, this event was attended by several of the resident artists and associates that make up Primary’s creative community. Similarly to the relationships people may have with biscuits or music, this session found commonalities between the participants by exploring their memories and associations with citrus. This manifested in many ways; whether simply as a fondness for the fruit, grandmothers burning the peel as incense, using them to clean brass or finding a bottle of Jif that had gone mouldy in the fridge. The session offered a multi-generational, multi-cultural opportunity to bond with relative strangers without feeling the pressure of a fixed objective or agenda that can sometimes be experienced in institutional socially engaged practice.
Dhissou’s project also raises numerous questions on the realities of the kind of care that museums and galleries can offer, particularly at a moment when exhibitions and programmes filed under care or socially engaged practice are ever more prevalent. Over a decade of funding cuts under a conservative government has led to a deficit in adequate social care and community projects. Increasingly this has left artists and public institutions like museums and galleries to pick up the slack, whilst simultaneously facing a reduction in their own funding.
The nature of this economic environment forces artists and institutions into competition with each other to secure their own share of ever-reduced public funding. In a sense, artworks and exhibitions produced under this pressure might start to look more like, or at least be marketed more like, the latest consumer goods. An example of this can be seen in the language of press releases and exhibition notes with frequent references to an exhibition being the first (e.g. the first solo exhibition etc.), highlighting the drive to break new ground that is underpinned by this funding deficit. It is important to question whether it is possible for this to be a space where care can flourish at all, or whether it is right to place this responsibility here. Furthermore, the sustainability of such practice should be scrutinised, particularly to question its effectiveness as a form of artist support. Does an institutional focus on care initiate longer term support for an artist, or are they left behind once their work is no longer marketable within the latest cultural trends?
When planning for Courses for Dis-Course(s) and submitting funding applications Dhissou specifically built this consideration for the reality of care and access into applications. If the project was going to take place in its fullness, then what would it require aside from just an artist fee and materials costs? The reality encompassed travel, food and material costs for the participants, onsite mental health first aid, BSL interpretation, a therapist if required, participation fees and a nominal care package fee for participants to spend on self-care, as well as a personal assistant and production assistant for Dhissou. This expanded approach to access challenges the expectation for the artist to be a caregiver while also actually enabling them to be. When speaking with Dhissou she described the benefits of this; ‘by me having care, it means that I’m available to give care too rather than being like, I’m sorry, I’m only one person.’
The physical space in which such projects take place is another important consideration. Are institutions like museums and galleries the best places to hold gatherings like this? Often their structure, both physically and organisationally, acts as a barrier to access which undercuts the value and aims of gatherings that seek to nourish communities, and one could argue that it would be better if larger institutions made space by supporting smaller arts organisations, community hubs and charity organisations. Primary itself sits in an interesting position in the arts ecosystem as an artist led organisation, with strong commitments to social change and active community engagement it may be more flexibly suited to respond to the needs of its community than larger and better funded regional organisations. At the same time Primary is also a National Portfolio Organisation, and so holds more resources than project spaces and smaller artist run galleries, such as GLOAM. Perhaps the most enriching way for larger institutions to show care is to step back and give way for others by cascading resources downwards. Rather than parachute a community group into a gallery space and label it under socially engaged practice, why not direct resources to the community itself, offer the resources for the community to self-direct and guide; instead of institutions directing learning outward, maybe it’s time that they receive learning instead. In the words of Dhissou at the Citrus Sharing, perhaps it’s time to embrace the ‘strangeness of being served at your own table.’
In the era of Arts Council England’s ‘Let’s Create Strategy’, a national cost of living crisis and a government that denies basic human rights (as made evident by the controversy surrounding the poor living conditions on the Bibby Stockholm barge) it’s vital that we question who really benefits from institutional programmes on care and socially engaged practice more generally. Are communities and audiences benefitting, or do such programmes merely provide further fuel for an institution to sustain itself? If the gaps in social care continue to be filled by galleries and museums then it is necessary to rigorously critique their approaches.
Courses for Dis-course(s) does not presume to have all the answers, but it did offer a place to start; asking questions together, over a home cooked meal or a cup of chai and Parle-G. The project succeeds in challenging the burdens placed on artists in precarious times, by driving forward a more realistic understanding of what it takes to produce an exhibition and socially engaged programme. At the same time, it tests the ground for how museums and galleries might re-evaluate their relationships with communities, by working together as a unified local network to more effectively direct resources into communities that may benefit from them. During the Citrus Sharing session there was a moment of hesitancy when marker pens were brought to table, raising concerns that they may stain the tablecloth. Dhissou’s response, ’let it, it adds to it. It is about living.’
Courses for Dis-Courses by Roo Dhissou took place at GLOAM and Primary in 2023, and the programme continues with upcoming live events.
Niall Farrelly is an artist, curator and writer based in Nottingham.
This review is supported by Primary.
Published 25.02.2024 by Lauren Velvick in Reviews
2,150 words