Utsa Hazarika on Minority Cultures in Yunnan China

Utsa Hazarika is a MFA Fine Arts student at Parsons School of Design (’19), and was a 2018 student fellow at the India China Institute. As a student fellow, she explored notions of indigeneity that are present in Chinese popular discourse and local culture, and looked at how the category of “indigenous” differs from the Chinese state’s category of “minority nationality”, as both are mechanisms designed to account for diversity and difference within nation states. You can read her reflections here.

Hazarika is a visual artist with a background in research and advocacy for indigenous communities in India. Her interdisciplinary project included visual, audio, and text-based documentation. Her preliminary research was based on conversations with scholars and travelers who have visited or lived in Yunnan and who are familiar with the administrative structure of the Chinese state as it relates to minority nationalities. She examined whether narratives play out in the same way in the Chinese context as they would for other, officially accepted indigenous communities, such as those in the Americas. Her research included field trips to the capital city of Kunming, and from there to Dali, Lijiang and finally, to Zhongdian County, officially renamed Shangri-La in 2001, in eastern Tibet.

Learn more about Utsa Hazarika’s work at her website.

Source: India China Institute