We’ve come a long way, baby!
2022
mixed media
paintings on canvas
The series We’ve Come a Long Way to Be Together consists of two groups of paintings. The works shown at Kunsthalle Wien refer to photos from the archive of Weltmuseum Wien and appear atop of pages of Wilfred Thesiger’s book The Marsh Arabs. Rajkamal Kahlon started the project with paintings that highlight historic portraits of individuals from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East found by the artist in the photo archive at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. The figures, either painted or phototransferred, appear atop a collage of pages cut from a first edition copy of the travel memoir Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger.
Travel has long been a privilege afforded to those with means. The Grand Tour, for example, was a birthright for young European men from wealthy families as part of their education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Advances in transportation allowed for increasing numbers of middle- and upper-class Europeans and Euro-Americans to move around the globe in the following centuries, giving rise to the travel memoir or travelogue as a form of writing. As the number of white travelers or “explorers” increased over time, so too did the number of colonial anthropologists who set out to study non-European peoples in the name of science. Thesiger was one such explorer and travel writer (1910–2003). He published Arabian Sands, considered to be a classic travel memoir, in 1959. In it, the author recounts his time in the Rub’ al-Khali (Empty Quarter of Arabia) between 1945 and 1950. The Marsh Arabs followed in 1964 and revolves around Thesiger’s time in Southern Iraq. In these publications and others like it, non-European subjects are portrayed in opposition to whiteness—if Europeans were civilized and refined, then non-Europeans were uncivilized and primitive. This racist mindset and approach to imaging people of color persists today. Travel by non-Europeans and non-Euro-Americans, by contrast, has historically been regarded in terms of migration and travelers often referred to as refugees. In this series, the artist depicts her subjects as contemporary globetrotters—bestowing them with tasteful accessories, outfits, and even hunting gear. These works aim to disrupt the conventional European and Euro-American gaze onto people of color and give pause to the ways in which travel and mobility are understood and discussed.
Travel has long been a privilege afforded to those with means. The Grand Tour, for example, was a birthright for young European men from wealthy families as part of their education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Advances in transportation allowed for increasing numbers of middle- and upper-class Europeans and Euro-Americans to move around the globe in the following centuries, giving rise to the travel memoir or travelogue as a form of writing. As the number of white travelers or “explorers” increased over time, so too did the number of colonial anthropologists who set out to study non-European peoples in the name of science. Thesiger was one such explorer and travel writer (1910–2003). He published Arabian Sands, considered to be a classic travel memoir, in 1959. In it, the author recounts his time in the Rub’ al-Khali (Empty Quarter of Arabia) between 1945 and 1950. The Marsh Arabs followed in 1964 and revolves around Thesiger’s time in Southern Iraq. In these publications and others like it, non-European subjects are portrayed in opposition to whiteness—if Europeans were civilized and refined, then non-Europeans were uncivilized and primitive. This racist mindset and approach to imaging people of color persists today. Travel by non-Europeans and non-Euro-Americans, by contrast, has historically been regarded in terms of migration and travelers often referred to as refugees. In this series, the artist depicts her subjects as contemporary globetrotters—bestowing them with tasteful accessories, outfits, and even hunting gear. These works aim to disrupt the conventional European and Euro-American gaze onto people of color and give pause to the ways in which travel and mobility are understood and discussed.