The documentary/fiction hybrid film 499 uses a fictional character to speak to real-life contemporary colonized people.
Aditya Iyer
Aditya Iyer is an independent journalist and writer based in London who writes about identity, migrant politics, and culture.
Posted inFilm
Raoul Peck’s Frustratingly Incomplete Treatise on Colonialism
For all its bluntness, Exterminate All the Brutes never once utters the words “rape” or “capitalism.”
Posted inOpinion
UK’s Threat to Punish Museums for Removing Colonial Statues Is Colonialism 101
The British government’s new “free speech champion,” Oliver Dowden, has threatened museums with funding cuts if they remove controversial statues.
Posted inArt
At British Museum, a Promising But Flawed Start to Grappling With Colonialism
“Empire and Collecting,” a new self-guided tour, reflects an attempt to help visitors understand the colonial origins of the collection.
Posted inNews
UK Activists Call for Removal of Monument to 19th-Century Imperialist Cecil Rhodes
At Oxford University, the Black Lives Matter movement has renewed protests over sanitized public narratives surrounding the violent legacy of British imperialism.
Posted inOpinion
A Toppled Statue In Bristol Reveals Limited Understandings of What Decolonizing Requires
Protesters’ removal of Edward Colston’s statue didn’t attack history; instead it corrected how we write it.
Posted inArt
Remembering India’s Forgotten Artistic Masters
A new, first-of-its-kind exhibition in London spotlights painters associated with with Kampani Qalam, the Urdu name for the rich, hybrid art style associated with commissions for the East India Company.
Posted inArt
A Worthwhile But Flawed Reconsideration of Orientalist Art
The British Museum’s Inspired by the East asks its audience to rehabilitate Orientalist art without ever focusing on what made it problematic in the first place.
Posted inArt
Marriages, Labor, and Odysseys: The South Asian Diaspora Tells Its Own Stories on Instagram
Academia often treats migrants as homogenous. Social media provides a way to present their narratives in an open and empowering manner.