UnMansplaining 2019
Mithu Sen assumed the persona of an unworldly possessed woman, deliberately catering to a specific fantasy that positioned her as an empowered witch, goddess, or entity. This choice served as a critique of criticism that tended to construct a fixed image of an artist's voice, often overlooking the underlying agency. The more profoundly viewers indulged in the fantasy of the exotic goddess, the more it tended to be fetishized and sexualized, leading to an increased inclination to project this role onto Sen herself.
Through her performance, Sen aimed to subversively redirect this gaze, projecting it back onto the institution, thereby revealing the institution's fetishistic inclinations. She utilized non-language as a conduit for expressing postcolonial and post-feminist rage. By delivering her narrative over a soundtrack consisting of 'mansplaining' voices sourced from YouTube, she engaged with notions of translatability and the knowability of identity. Ultimately, the piece symbolized her dismantling of a pernicious feedback loop.
