Binder1 Inner_JRD

art & culture
As a well-versed artist and academician Shubigi Rao
is a pandora’s box of information whose interest lain
in various fields which requires one to be critical and
informed and openly opinionated to allow oneself to
conceptual frameworks in order to teach oneself
new things
sanaa nalwalla
Tell us a little about yourself...
I’m an artist and writer, based in Singapore. I’m really an artist
only because it gives me the freedom to research and make
work about any field, to be critical and informed and openly
opinionated, to switch between conceptual frameworks and
to teach myself new things, media, and ideas. So my interests
range from archaeology, neuroscience, outdated 13th-19th
century science, natural history, scholarship and exploration,
to language, libraries, and even historical acts of cultural
genocide, to name a few.
How did you come about working with the infamous
Raoul? Could you elaborate on your choice of a
male alias?
S Raoul was an erstwhile scientist, theorist, archaeologist and
scapegoat, as well as a mentor to me. As a male of no clear
ethnic persuasion, he became a very useful persona under
which I could make ten years worth of art, write scientific
papers (all hoaxes of course), and academic art history books
(also not wholly truthful). Its been fun watching how easily
people accept the word (and work) of a dead male over that of
a living female. So I’ve been the ‘booth girl’ who presented his
neuroscientific work at the global congress of neuroscientists
in 2010, while brilliant scientist admired S. Raoul’s collection
of 19 th century lobotomy tools (they were really rusty crochet
hooks), and have even written a biography of him. He’s really
just me, with a paper moustache, but a surprising number of
people bought into that fiction. I suppose it says a lot about
gender politics in art, academia, and authority, as well about
our willingness to believe even the most outlandish premise,
if it is presented in a convincing enough fashion.
What is the nature of your work which makes
it interesting?
I’m not sure if it’s interesting to anyone else, but I’m endlessly
fascinated by the breadth and range of knowledge and wonder
in the natural world, the cosmos, at the quantum level, in
70 march 2017 www.crememagazine.in