Dot not Feather
From Annu Matthew’s ‘An Indian from India’
by Priya Chhaya
What does it mean to be American? What do we look like? What language do we speak? How do we dress? Is there one specific way to describe who we are in a nutshell?
There are a number of analogies out there that try to put “American” in a specific box. The melting pot, one giant amalgamated super culture; or the stew, one single broth with many different vegetables, each adding their own flavor to the mix. Many say we are a country built on ideals and ideology, that our founding documents undergird the framework that make Americans… Americans.
Where are you from? Virginia
No, where are you really from?
This isn’t an unfamiliar conversation for many individuals whose speech, color, or attitude doesn’t immediately fall into a particular view of what it means to be American. For Indian Americans sometimes the conversation goes like this:
Where are you really from? My family (or I) am Indian.
What tribe?
One of my oldest friends is, as he likes to say “Windian” (half Caucasian, half Indian). He would often anticipate that second question and clarify: “I am half Indian. Dot, not feather.”
I thought about this when I saw Annu Matthew’s work at the Beyond Bollywood exhibition. These images highlight the verbal confusion perpetuated by Christopher Columbus who thought he had landed in Indies, and so called Native Americans “Indians.” In her series, “An Indian from India” Matthew plays off the parallels of the early nineteenth and twentieth century photographs by placing images of Native Americans and Indians side by side.
There are a lot of layers to this art series. Historically you can see how Americans and British colonizers took similar photographic techniques to document what this unfamiliar culture “looked” like. Each image, as portraits, serves to make the individual a stationary object — being observed from the outside looking in. (Aside: For those of you who had a chance to see the Art of Yoga exhibition at the Freer Sackler there was a similar section where you could see how images of Yogis and Indians were documented visually in much a similar way as the Native American cultures).
These images are the first visual images those abroad saw of the unfamiliar, non-Western world, and consequently played a significant role in influencing how both Native Americans and Indians from India were perceived.
From a 21st century perspective I love how Matthew used these dueling images to investigate that sense of “otherness” we feel when someone asks where we are really from. While most of the time it is a benign question, it does create that feeling of someone looking at us from the outside, not quite understanding who we are or where we come from.
Whether America is a melting pot, a stew, or a nation of ideals how others see us is just as important as how we self-identify. While “dot, not feather” is meant to be a flip and light answer to an often asked question (and very much my friend’s personality), how we choose to answer helps determine how we want others to see us.
Do you have a story to share?
Tell us @smithsonianapa #BeyondBollywood or www.facebook.com/IAHP
Check out Annu Matthew’s artwork at Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation at the National Museum of Natural History through August 16, 2015.
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