An Aperture Toward Abstraction in Tejal Shah's Moving-Image Works

Abstract This article explores the moving image practice of the India based queer artist Tejal Shah. Acknowledging their preeminent status as a queer artist and activist whose media works have been exhibited widely in urban locations since the early 2000, this approach opens with a Chingari Chumma/Stinging Kiss (2000), a video work completed in collaboration with Anuj Vaidya. In this reading, we note their investment in queer subculture tied to an equally intimate rehearsals with the archive of popular Indian cinema. The second move of this articles is reserved for their five-channel video installation Between the Waves (2012). Attending to its specifics of installation, I offer a close reading of one of the channels to argue that it offers an aperture towards abstraction, queer abstraction to be on point.