DEANNA SIRLIN
Pink is the Navy Blue
Concept Images




.jpg)
The proposed artwork, “Pink is the Navy Blue,” will be about color, light, sound, movement and performance referencing the centrality and meanings of color to Desi culture, feminism, fashion, and history. The phrase “Pink is the Navy Blue of India,” from which the title derives, was coined in 1962 by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (this collaborative work will be a nod to her). As Seema Krish puts it, “Pink exemplifies tradition and balance”; most recently, it has come to signify Feminism and has become the power color for Women.
I have established my studio as a site on which to investigate color and light. My practice is mediated by a set of open-ended, continually shifting questions as to the influence of gesture, material, color, and architecture upon my work. My installations elaborate on the question of how transparency and color can function as lenses on social conditions of particular times and places. “Pink is the Navy Blue” will bring together my use of color and light to activate the space and create an immersive experience for the viewer with the dancers of ATL Satrangi, an all-woman fusion dance team based in Atlanta. Fusion dance combines traditional Indian dance with contemporary styles in spectacular, high-energy performances. ATL Satrangi strive to share their passion for dance and women’s empowerment through their choreography. The word “satrangi,” which means “composed of seven colors,” like a rainbow, identifies color as a concern shared across art forms and cultures. Pink is the Navy Blue will be a feminist performance work focused on color as it connects to the social ecosystem of feminist performance and engaging with the Southeast Asian community in Atlanta. With artists from Atl Satrangi, I will create a celebratory procession of movement that reflects the power of color in culture. This partnership blends ideas of installation with performance, sound, light and color in an experimental platform that hybridizes media and creates a new cross-pollination between artist and performer.
This cross-pollination of artists working in different forms to create a hybrid of installation and movement is one reason this artwork is important. It will give Desi culture a platform in the art context, empowering the performers, who are first-generation women of South Asian descent, and potentially broadening the art audience in Atlanta. This performance will give these young artists an opportunity to express their pride in their culture (the word Desi is used by people of the South Asian diaspora “as a means of asserting or reclaiming a sense of pride”), enable them to reach different audiences, and give those audiences an opportunity to celebrate South Asian culture with them. It will be a cross-generational undertaking in which older and younger artists will work together and learn from each other, giving voice to women artists.
Performances of “Pink is the Navy Blue” will be free and open to the public. The combination of my work with ATL Satrangi will bring together a diverse audience from both the art world and Atlanta’s large South Asian community.