Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony⁵ essentially states the success of the dominant social group in presenting their definition of reality, their view of the world, in such a way that other classes accept it as 'common sense'. The general 'consensus' is that it is the only sensible way of seeing the world. Any groups who present an alternative view are therefore marginalized.

Though Gramsci’s original context centered on Marxist analysis on economic class struggles, the concept finds parity when applied to race (or for that matter any social) relations.  The fact that I can use race as a ‘sensible’ classification only highlights how persuasive a hegemonic regime is in reinforcing its own beliefs.

By buying into a racially contrived system, one is forever the victim or victor simply due to the fact that one cannot change the color of their skin (and more importantly the privileges or handicaps it affords).  However in shifting the discourse from divisiveness of bodies to disruptions in ideological narratives, we move from deterministic narratives to dialectic dialogue where one is afforded agency and fluidity.

I also want to caution against a misread of hegemony.  One shouldn’t see hegemony as a small group of backroom illuminati controlling the world.  In a society, cultural hegemony is neither monolithic, nor a unified system of values, but a complex of stratified social structures, wherein each social and economic class has a social purpose and an internal class-logic that allows its members to behave in a way that is particular and different from the behaviors of the members of other social classes, whilst co-existing with them as constituents of the society.

The dominant narrative of the past three centuries is not only Western, building off of hundreds of years of colonial histories, but since the middle of the last century, also American and propagating and functioning through the logic of capitalism. That it has inherently privileged white people rests simply on the fact that it is a reflection and construction of ‘white’ cultural beliefs, desires, traditions, histories, language, values, etc. That the power, media and aesthetic apparatus in this country all work to reinforce this should already be a drawn out conclusion. Inherently then our worldview subjugates itself through this gaze. And in order to function in it, one is asked to conform to its logic. I want to clarify that ‘white’ refers less to biological classifications and more to the cultural construction of ‘white’ values. Thus, in spite of the color of your skin one can actively participate soundly within this hegemony (though the current social/political climate may beg to differ). So either drink the Kool-aid (or Capri Sun mind you) or stay thirsty.

In the Venn diagram of cultural influence, I couldn’t tell you where white ends but I sure as hell know where brown starts.

More importantly to our context, what might be Art and the artist’s relationship to hegemony?

Any talk about art and race cannot ignore the underlying power (and resulting economic) relations that govern it. A recent article by The New York Times (“The Faces of American Power, Nearly as White as the Oscar Nominees”⁶) affirms our nation’s racial condition. Simply put, Danto’s Artworld⁷ is just another articulation of the hegemonic powers that governs it. Such that all the apparatus’ that define, validate, maintain and reproduce the cultural category of art work to reinforce the hegemony. If it is still a very white America; it is still a very white Artworld. The same structures that have challenged people of color in America with unequal access to education, resources and power as well as a lack of agency and self-determination, are also in play for the Arts and must be first addressed if serious change can occur. Can this occur through the existing institutions or are we in need of colorful alternatives (institutional or not) that challenge how art engages society is something for consideration.

The othering of colored America also works in more subtle ways as well.  As the adage goes, language constructs our realities, so simply observing when racial handles are and are not used to describe our citizenry reveals underlying racial power relations.  Who for example gets hyphenated when it comes to the construction of national identity? African-American, Asian- American, Latino American labels are typically ascribed, not necessarily as a negative but just enough to hint at the minority condition (and even welcomed by said communities as means of self-determination). I have yet to come across someone explicitly introduced as a white or Caucasian-American. Unless one is perhaps David Duke, an introduction of John Smith, a leader of the white American community is not stated in good company, the assumption being either that white America is synonymous with America (and to do otherwise positions whites also as a sub group) or rather shamefully reveals underlying racial tensions of white superiority. When it comes to describing the artist, we see a similar construction.  Unless specifically dealing with race, very rarely does the term “white” artist see use, however colored artist are constantly described through racial and ethnic epithets such as Black artist, Asian artist, Latino artist, Muslim artist, etc. We might find an analogy in the world of rap, where it is typically the white rapper that is called-out. Chuck D on the other hand, needs no racial adjective, which suggest that not only is the normative condition that the rapper is black but also and just as important that the art form is the cultural province of the black community. For those requiring racial handles, the form then is an adopted condition. If similar linguistic logic were applied to our art context, it would seem that the colored artist is similarly “differentiated” from the default white condition.  This logic also asserts art to be the domain of white culture, and colored artists as secondary adopters or as makers of forms deviating from the normative. Which begs the question: what is then produced by these “othered” artists? Is it still what we might collectively call contemporary art or is it more accurately South Asian contemporary art or contemporary South Asian art? It is important to think through the subtleties of these labels beyond just taxonomical concerns as they more importantly suggest deviating loci of control in art production and dissemination.

As arguably are all artists, the colored artist echoes the basic concerns of their community, in this case, the existential and political struggle of defining their marginalized group’s identity and to legitimize and bring parity to their cultural values against that of the dominant one.  The artist’s work, like the group, exists in constant opposition and confrontation to the hegemony and demands agency in the group’s representations. This typically takes on an admiring or documentary shape, producing not only self-sanctioned representations but also, more importantly, allowing the public access to them (celebrating the marginalized). The colored artist is also at hand to refute and defuse the misrepresentations propagated on their community through the dominant gaze. These may be outright racist, or just misinformed, typically done through appropriating and controlling them. This may also include reflecting on group traumas inflicted in their discrimination (shaming the hegemony). Lastly, the colored artist desires unique cultural and aesthetic forms that markedly do not exist in the dominant culture and one that can be pointed to as their own. This may be based on their communities own existing folk vernaculars, traditions, and cultural rituals (found within their communities neighborhoods or in the case of the immigrant in their homelands), or revisiting formal forms from their real or imagined homelands that typically existed before colonial and imperial suppression and the enforcement of modernism (though one wonders how far we need ot go back to find the authentic). It would not be wrong to consider these as stagnated aesthetics, forms that, due to colonial interventions, were never allowed the space and time to evolve (ethnic formalism).  Though taken with broad strokes, these elements illustrate that the art produced by the “othered” artist does not look like that of the white artist (how could it, different folks, different strokes, curry and bologna).

More importantly though, similar to what has occurred on European national soccer teams, the colored artist struggles for equal representation for themselves and for their communities’ cultural identity in the collective milieu that is contemporary Art and society in general.  Challenging the orthodoxy by exposing the unfamiliar and marginalized, slowly chipping away at the normative white hegemony in contemporary art (how many of our art books are filled up with white people). Yes, we want to be known as 30 Americans and just that, 30 Americans.

In her article “The Overwhelming Whiteness of Black Art“⁸, Jamilah King observes more and more institutions are featuring the work of black artists” and asks: “When will the audiences reflect it?” Lamenting the fact that most audience members visiting Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014, were white, she describes precedential social patterns (based on economic and racial histories) that explain black exclusion from participation in museums and art.

Though I agree with the observation that attendance of minority communities at Art venues does not correspond to their demographics, I question why we feel we have to make excuses for our communities not attending hegemonic Institutions (have they not learned to be white enough?) Rather, I lay responsibility on the artists themselves (I include myself in this critique). I have to wonder, who’s culture are we vanguards to? If audience profile is to be measured, then arguably, the colored artist acts more the vanguard to white culture than to its own.  Perhaps as colored artists we echo bell hooks’s lament as an academic, the moderator/interpreter that carries the tales of one group to the other, “[There is] no need to hear your voice, when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still [the] colonizer, the speaking subject, and you are now at the center of my talk”.⁹

What is obligatory then is to focus inward and play the proper role of vanguards within our own communities. How do the strategies and concerns of contemporary Art practice actually engage our, and non-white, communities and their concerns? Institutional frameworks also need to be reconsidered. If the community doesn’t go to the museum, why build one? What art happens in the mosque? In doing so, forfeits engagement with the hegemony negating it as the center of power and shifts the loci into our own communities, affording autonomy, agency and access. I would argue Music plays a better cultural role at doing this (typically legitimatized by its own community before inviting the external ear). Perhaps music is more authentic, more street, more a product of and for the community. Art, a product of the academy, perhaps still carries with it too much of the master’s gate.

My final thoughts (or rather thought experiment) address these mimetic vestiges and the specter of western supremacy. As an M.F.A. carrying artist, I have been indoctrinated in and internalized Western culture to such an extent it is hard to imagine any other system of logic. But you see dada¹⁰ Duchamp wasn’t my grandfather. Duchamp, white, French then Naturalized American, bourgeois. My grandfather, brown, born in India and died in Pakistan (though he never moved), never had indoor or outdoor plumbing let alone urinals to subvert (besides, our traditional toilets are squat). Perhaps to really cleave oneself one has to rewrite the book and imagine what our own modernities might have been, and what forms and conclusions might have been reached. Looking beyond the obvious surface differences of color and adornment, the contrast between the two transport trucks reveals an underlying difference in logic, where the West sees the transport vehicle as efficient and corporate, the other sees it as a space for personal expressions and aspirational excess. One wonders then where the Mughals miniatures would have evolved to if not stagnated and affected by Western forms. Would something altogether different have emerged? Through what forms would our vanguards preach? Would it be something truly foreign and unrecognizable (and not Art), or would it too reach the same conclusions as the West?

All I know is it would be our own.