Mother’s Ruin: Refracting the imperial gaze

By considering the histories of a colonial object on the Taieri Plain in New Zealand, this text invites readers to critically examine dominant narratives and envision alternative ways of perceiving the world. The text emphasises the importance of exploring the socio-political and economic processes that shape our experiences. It also acknowledges the contested nature of our multicultural and postcolonial realities, recognising the author’s position within the research. Situated knowledges, as proposed by Donna Haraway, become a guiding principle for understanding diverse perspectives without falling into relativism. The author then invites us to think with Slavoj Žižek and Ann Stoler about ideology, violence and imperial debris. With Žižek, we consider the operation of ideology and violence. With Ann Stoler's concept of imperial debris and ruination, we expand our gaze beyond physical structures to the effects of colonial legacies that shape contemporary realities. These ideas are then distilled into a visual lexicon of images that are transformed through layering, accumulation and juxtaposition, deploying water, space, light, shatter, digitisation, glitch and reflection in an attempt to refract the imperial gaze.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Grantor

Otago Polytechnic

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Lowe, Neil

• Dunedin (N.Z.)
• New Zealand
• installation art
• post-colonialism
• architectural decay
• philosophy of art

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6191

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:null:10652/6191