Videofag presents Eshan Rafi's TOUCHING / DIANA

August 26, 2014

7 - 10

Free

Seating limited to 20 person dinner

TOUCHING / DIANA is an ongoing project using the life and death of Princess Diana as a pathway to exploring queer lives and colonial encounters. While mining the internet archive of the late Diana, I come across an insecure subject with a strong sense of justice who was

accorded enormous attention due to her white cisgender body and her aristocratic background. This sense of justice translated into visiting countries in the global south for "humanitarian" causes where Diana touched others, both figuratively and literally, and was also touched by them. At the same time, the constant attention the media placed on her revealed narratives about sickness, loneliness, and finally, death.

Through various different iterations of art works, I ask if the spectre of Diana can be used to talk about marginal queer lives in transformative ways, if her desire to touch others can be used to examine how the act of touching is weighted by relationships of power, and if the mapping

of her body on to the bodies of queer/of colour subjects beginning with my own body can open up an indeterminate zone in which colonial violence and queer feelings can be imaginatively reassembled.

- Eshan Rafi