Falaks Vasa
Visiting Assistant Professor
my body (of work)
is a decolonizing and queering of the power structures that uphold colonial logics of binaries (nature/culture, man/woman, self/other).
my body (of work)
is interdisciplinary — using video, photography, pedagogy, writing, 3d animation and more,
to oscillate intentionally between definition and obscurity.
my body (of work)
resists the ‘other-ing’ of non-humans and the marginalization of queer/trans people of color,
by existing.
my body (of work)
is funny, using humor to both invite and disarm my audiences, slowly
revealing layers of meaning within and beyond laughter.
my body (of work)
searches for joy in itself, and shares it with those whose joy has been systemically stolen.
my body (of work)
rests.
About the work:
‘Phool/Fool’ takes up foolery and failure as glitch, and explores the slippage of language between phool (‘flower’ in Hindi) and ‘fool’ (both nicknames I’ve been given). It claims foolery as a queer strategy of resistance, and posits it as a complex and deeply intentional technique that ‘requires fooling itself into thinking it’s not’. This work has pedagogically birthed courses such as ‘Queer Strategies of Resistance: Fools, Tricksters, Shapeshifters’. Something slips. Something fails. Nothing is revealed, but someone has been fooled. Is it you? Girl, why are you asking me? I don’t know!
Featured in:
Falaks Vasa (they/she, b. Kolkata, 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist with a set of practices that are always oscillating between definition and obscurity. Their work spans video, performance, fiber art, poetry, photography, 3D animation, stand-up comedy, and more. Falaks graduated with an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University (2023), a BFA in Studio Art from SAIC (2018), and currently teaches at MassArt as Visiting Assistant Professor, and at RISD as Lecturer and Critic.
