Aminder Virdee - Art Gene

[listen to page HERE]

CONSTELLATIONS OF PAIN AND JOY

For Still Remote, artist Aminder Virdee is sharing the work-in-progress Constellations of Pain and Joy. This moving-image piece uses digital drawings to map the pathways of pain, joy, and the cosmos onto the body.

With the slow movement of a celestial map that mirrors Indian astronomy, Aminder considers the relationship between individuals and the universe, using cartography to blur the boundaries between the astral and tangible bodies.

BACKGROUND

With a practice rooted in acts of justice, namely reclamation, resistance, and cross-movement solidarity, Aminder is driven by her quadruple-marginalised identity, and the collective experiences of the communities she intersects.

In creating artistic acts of justice that seek to agitate ingrained ideals, Aminder asserts her political values in a society that demands endless self-work in order to survive. Through considering neurodivergence, chronic illness, access, and her South Asian heritage, Aminder makes reconstructions of the world, reframing herself by inviting the stare (or gaze) on her own terms. In a conscious refusal to be othered, this assertion of agency seeks to reclaim her bodymind (a term for the inseparable, integrated experience of the body and mind). Rather than being dehumanised, scrutinised, or reduced to a spectacle, this reimagined form, rooted in disability justice, critiques the status quo in an assertion of herself as a site of beauty, boundless potential, and resistance.

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Constellations of Pain and Joy began in February 2022, and has been shaped through digital drawings, using a stylus and tablet, along with the software TouchDesign. It explores pain and loss, as well as joy, vitality and the complex internal and external dynamics of existence, to celebrate the inherent beauty of all bodyminds of difference.

Touching on ideas of psychogeography, navigation, and identity, Constellations of Pain and Joy, highlights the unseen ties and relationships between our physical and emotional experiences. It also moves beyond the individual to the expansive cosmic environment that surrounds us. Though a stationary celestial map, it seeks to capture the essence of these dynamic constellations, reflecting the evolving, individual journey we take through life.

While our experience of living is anchored in our tangible bodies, it also extends into the infinite potential of existence. In Constellations of Pain and Joy, Aminder seeks to blur the boundaries of our physical selves, the Earth’s terrains, and the celestial environment to meditate on both the micro/macrocosm.

Through a gentle motion that reflects Aminder’s need for stimming, Constellations of Pain and Joy offers a cosmic dance through crip-time. It embraces non-linear, flexible, and varied experiences that put us outside the rotation of the sun and in tune with the unique pace of the body.

With time functioning in plural, our understanding of space, disability, and place can become more inclusive, moving beyond the traditional physical, geographical, cosmic and time-based boundaries, into a fluid ever-changing and adapting process.

A sketch of a digitally hand-drawn figure with body differences, rendered in joyous shades of brown with accents of orange and red. Some fine black lines trace scars, folds, and contours across the back, intersecting with small red, orange, brown, black, grey, and yellow dots, creating a detailed life map on the skin. These lines extend into the pale, neutral-toned background, accompanied by coloured dots that suggest stars, planets, and asteroids, placing the figure at the centre of a celestial map

A laptop screen of a digitally hand-drawn figure with body differences open in photoshop. A tab of visible and invisible layers are open on the side, showing work in progress. There are some shades of brown with accents of orange and red, and fine black lines trace scars, folds, and contours across the back of the figure. Small red, orange, brown, black, grey, and yellow dots, surround the figure, with lines extending into the background suggesting stars, planets, or a celestial map.

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“Scars are a roadmap — pathways of pain, events, and memories so raw and powerful that they etch their way from the core of my soul, through the nucleus of each cell, to the surface of my skin. Yet, scars are also the tangible poetry of life’s complexity, imprinted into our being as silent witnesses to the intricate fabric of existence. They are not ‘imperfections’ but rather marks of beauty, each a unique piece of art that celebrates the richness of our stories, embracing the raw and unfiltered reality of life’s texture. These scars, like constellations, connect the personal to the universal, mapping the journey through identity on the (in)visibility spectrum, and interdependence. They serve as a bridge between the body and the cosmos, intertwining with the Earth’s terrain and the philosophical, cultural, and cosmic narratives that shape our understanding of existence, from the ancestral and ancient wisdom of Indian astronomy to the ever-evolving dance of psychogeography and disability justice.

The toxicity of oppression, capitalism, and isolation creeps into our bodies, lands, minds, atmosphere, and relationships—into the very DNA of life—leaving painful yet inevitable scars. This toxicity is especially raw and enduring for certain social groups, particularly sick crips, who have continued to face prolonged shielding-based isolation since the onset of the global COVID pandemic in December 2019. These scars, mirrored in eroded landscapes, sick lands, and cosmic remnants, are reflected on my bodymind, where calluses form and transform, binding us together in a shared narrative of change and enduring beauty.”

Aminder Virdee

A slide show of two images of a digital editing workspace, both with menu sidebars and tools on the left and right, and a timeline below. One image shows a preview of a digitally hand-drawn figure with body differences, rendered in joyous shades of brown with accents of orange and red, surrounded by radiant lines and dots that suggest stars, planets, and asteroids, placing the figure at the centre of a celestial map. Thumbnail pop outs on the image show previews of different layers. Second image shows a blank central space with the thumbnail pop outs organised like a flowchart, connected by thin curved lines.

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Elements from this exhibition, and the rest of our programme will be shared across our digital platforms. Find out more about Still Remote and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to make sure you don’t miss out.

AMINDER VIRDEE

Aminder Virdee is a South Asian transdisciplinary artist; arts facilitator; writer; filmmaker; consultant; and community arts and creative justice facilitator. She is also the founder of DIVA (Disabled Intersectional Voices in the Arts), and founding member of CripJoy.

Aminder’s practice is steered through an intersectional, autoethnographic, disability justice, crip technoscience, decolonisation, and magical realism lens. It is deeply rooted in creative acts of justice—namely, reclamation, resistance, and cross-movement solidarity — driven by the quadruple-marginalised identity, lifelong complex lived experiences, and the collective experiences of the multiple marginalised communities she intersects.

Aminder has a kaleidoscopic approach to art-making, blending sculpture, computational art, audiovisual art, and installation. By creating art that can translate across various sites, from desk to bed, while supporting her bodymind within the concept of crip-time — a framework coined by Alison Kafer that acknowledges the unique temporalities of disabled lives.

Aminder’s work challenges and disrupts social norms, conventional ideals, and perceptions of normativity, neurotypicality, mobility, productivity, and prescribed ways of being in the world. By artistically transforming oppressive systems into radical sites of agency, resistance, interdependence, and catharsis, she amplifies the unheard, censored, and unrepresented personal and collective experiences and histories of triple- and quadruple-marginalised peoples.