Excess, Embodiment, and Exposure: Zarina Bhimji in the 1980s
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
8-3-2026 4:48 AM
Description
In 1989, lens-based artist Zarina Bhimji was invited by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) to intervene into the space of the museum with a large-format Polaroid camera. The result was a series of ten haunting photographs that probed the museum’s and the photographic medium’s fraught ties to colonialism, informed by Bhimji’s personal histories of displacement. While Bhimji is perhaps most known for her video work of the 2000s, this paper situates her as an artist emerging from the 1980s, which notably saw the establishment of the British black arts movement and the concurrent rise of Third World feminist movements. Both movements took on questions surrounding representation and visibility in a world still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and its ties to the continued marginalization of people of color. The photographic image is a particular site of contestation for Bhimji as she introduces image noise, chemical seepage, and double exposures to disrupt the notion of photography as neutral surface. Rather than aiming for exhaustiveness, this talk proposes a close reading of some of Bhimji’s photographs to explore how photography can be used as a tool of anti-colonial resistance that grants women of color the right to narrate themselves from within.
Grace Xiao (she/her) is a curatorial assistant at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the history of photography read through modern and contemporary artists invested in questions of placemaking, migration, and the construction and deconstruction of images. Her scholarship is informed primarily by postcolonial theory, theories of diaspora, and gender and sexuality studies. She recently graduated from Brown University with a BA in art history and has previously worked across various departments at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and Princeton University Art Museum.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Xiao, Grace, "Excess, Embodiment, and Exposure: Zarina Bhimji in the 1980s" (2026). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day. 10.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2026/schedule/10
Excess, Embodiment, and Exposure: Zarina Bhimji in the 1980s
In 1989, lens-based artist Zarina Bhimji was invited by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) to intervene into the space of the museum with a large-format Polaroid camera. The result was a series of ten haunting photographs that probed the museum’s and the photographic medium’s fraught ties to colonialism, informed by Bhimji’s personal histories of displacement. While Bhimji is perhaps most known for her video work of the 2000s, this paper situates her as an artist emerging from the 1980s, which notably saw the establishment of the British black arts movement and the concurrent rise of Third World feminist movements. Both movements took on questions surrounding representation and visibility in a world still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and its ties to the continued marginalization of people of color. The photographic image is a particular site of contestation for Bhimji as she introduces image noise, chemical seepage, and double exposures to disrupt the notion of photography as neutral surface. Rather than aiming for exhaustiveness, this talk proposes a close reading of some of Bhimji’s photographs to explore how photography can be used as a tool of anti-colonial resistance that grants women of color the right to narrate themselves from within.
Grace Xiao (she/her) is a curatorial assistant at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the history of photography read through modern and contemporary artists invested in questions of placemaking, migration, and the construction and deconstruction of images. Her scholarship is informed primarily by postcolonial theory, theories of diaspora, and gender and sexuality studies. She recently graduated from Brown University with a BA in art history and has previously worked across various departments at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and Princeton University Art Museum.