Indigo orientalism: The fabric art of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Candice Lin

This article comparatively reads the Buddhism-inspired cyanotype work of the US queer-theory scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and the indigo-dyed fabric work of the LA-based multimedia artist Candice Lin. It examines how Jason Edwards, one of the very few scholars to analyze Sedgwick's visual art, mistakenly identifies her cyanotype blue as “indigo” rather than Prussian blue, tracing this error to the troubled link between the visual blur of the two blues and their opposing geohistorical associations—Prussian with the West and indigo with the East. I read this charged mistake as an Orientalist refusal. Lin, on the other hand, enacts traditional indigo-dyeing techniques to critique the colonial history of the indigo trade. Despite her elaborate distancing of her ethnicity from her artistic practice, the two are often conflated in its reception. Underlining the tendency in their work perceptions where their ethnicity is either confounded (Sedgwick) or overdetermined (Lin), this article argues that indigo blue is treated similarly. At the same time, it foregrounds the deep blue that permeates across the two artists’ work that helps dismantle such a binary. By elucidating the previously unstated distinction between the underexamined and oversaturated readings of color and ethnicity in their work, this article seeks to transform this absent discussion into an impetus for envisioning an expansive queer relationality across the Pacific.