RISD: CRITICAL CONNECTIONS

by Simone Solondz, 10/4/2021

What does it mean to be “as American as apple pie?” Who are the keepers and bearers of cultural knowledge in our country? Artist/educator Namita Gupta Wiggers has been focused on such questions for most of her life and is committed to disrupting dated and exclusionary notions and framing new ways to talk about the West, modernity and what constitutes being American.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Wiggers says that her work is personal. “I am a brown body in a white context,” she explains, “especially in the spaces I operate in, such as museums and institutions of higher ed. But I am an American. And apple pie is actually an English invention made from fruit that was cultivated in Asia.” . . . . .