Portfolio > Curatorial Project

Cultural identity and racial stereotypes are further pushed in Maanik Singh Chauhan’s paintings. Through utilizing traditional western techniques of portraiture and landscape painting Maanik paints a portrait of his Punjabi Sikh identity from referencing both family and found photographs. The family portraits depict an immigrant family living in the American mid-west. A Western audience views the work with stereotypes of ethnicity and culture that we carry within us living in North America. The work Air and Space depicts Maanik and his brother as children visiting an airplane museum. In the Painting the boys are seen standing in front of a display of airplane models. In the West airplanes and people who have South Asian and Middle Eastern origins have been associated with violence and at a first glance a western audience views the painting with this stereotype neglecting to see that the painting actually depicts the boys posing in front of an airplane display. The three smaller works in the exhibition resemble a family album, one image being a portrait of two young boys in their back yard, the family dog and the last painting being the family home. Two of these images are painted from using family photographs but the house is painted from a found photograph. The found image plays with the notion of truth in photography and how we create our own stories when we look at images placed together as a series. We more than likely assume that the house is the family home of Maanik’s thus the viewer is trying to weave an identity of the artist from the visual clues that are given in the work.