Saree and the City at the New York Historical

In her 2014 work “Saree & The City,” artist Christina Dhanuja reflects on the plain cotton saris worn by Dalit women—describing them as both “armor and necessity”—and honors the resilience of her mother and grandmothers in confronting caste oppression while forging lives in modern cities.

Hyperallergic: The Sartorial Is Political in “The New York Sari”

Writer Christina Dhanuja, co-founder of Dalit History Month, contributed what she calls a “prophetic” portrait of herself wearing a sari and facing the expanse of the New York City skyline.

“Perhaps I anticipated the condescension that would come my way, and the plain, pink saree symbolizing my resilience, even as I’d stand facing a city’s intimidation,” she said in an email to Hyperallergic, referencing the discrimination she faced as a Dalit woman in corporate America. Dhanuja has long been outspoken about casteism as “deeply alive” yet routinely erased and denied in South Asia and the diaspora.

“Caste, intertwined with class, is what shapes access to creative spaces. Which is why naming it is crucial,” Dhanuja continued. “It allows us to sit with the discomfort of South Asian histories being complex, and often complicated, struggles for equality, status, and self-determination.”

Curation at the Bellafonte Art Museum

The Bellefonte Art Museum in collaboration with Christina Dhanuja, writer and co-founder of Dalit History month, presents Heralding Utopias: Conception of a caste-less, class-less, state-less world.

Heralding Utopias brings together visual art created by Dalit and Adivasi artists, whose conceptions of a world are free from caste, class, and state divisions. This exhibition, showcasing the work of fifteen artists from around the world, takes its inspiration from the utopian vision of the 15th century Indian saint-poet Guru Ravidas. Titled Begumpura, the saint imagines a place with no pain, taxes, or terror; no one is third or second in this land, and everyone is a friend of another.

Exhibition Committee Members: Christina Dhanuja, Lori Fisher, Pat House, Nalini Krishnankutty, and Alagammai Meyyappan

This exhibition is sponsored in part by The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, The PA Council on the Arts, Pan APIDA Circle, and a community of local supporters.