Visual Hybridity and Cultural Resistance: The Interplay of Colonialism and Indigenous Art Forms

Abstract

This review article considers visual hybridity as a cultural form of resistance in colonial and post-colonial contexts. It considers how indigenous performance has been impacted by, and responded to, colonial aesthetics and representation. It draws on important theoretical engagements with visual hybridity, focusing particularly on Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, ambivalence, and the third space. It argues that hybridity was never simply the outcome of colonial impacts, but rather a deliberate site for negotiation, subversion and identity-making. Through a series of historical and contemporary case studies, beginning with the case of Indo-Portuguese Christian art on the Malabar Coast, to Latin American “Indochristian” art, to folk/popular traditions like Kalighat painting and Pattachitra, as well as recent diasporic art-making practices like Yinka Shonibare, and Nina Mangalanayagam, this review considers how hybrid visual practices have functioned both as meaningful tactics of survival, critique and self-assertion. The study suggests that hybridity provides an opportunity to subvert colonial authority: by reworking colonial motifs into locally determined forms and materials, the artists destabilize the symbolic hierarchies of colonial powers and call into question their claims to cultural superiority. Simultaneously, the forms provide reclamation of agency for indigenous people by inserting native symbolic systems into frameworks that have been imposed on them. In religious domains, syncretic acts permitted the ongoing existence of indigenous spiritual traditions while colonialism silenced them. Hybridity also plays a pivotal role in identity negotiation, especially for diasporic and mixed-heritage people. Through hybrid visual languages, artists demonstrate their complex in-between selves and challenge the notion of fixed cultural binaries. Furthermore, hybrid art often serves as political commentary, utilizing satire, symbolism and digestible visual language to critique social and colonial hierarchies. The debate surrounding authenticity demonstrates that hybrid pieces of art, at their worst, may not be authentic or pure; The commodification of hybrid art also can neutralize the subversive or artistic intentions of hybrid art and those analyzing it thereby emphasizing the aesthetic, marketability, and commercial appeal of hybrid forms, which does not recognize nor appreciate their deeper meanings and significance. Ultimately, this paper suggests that visual hybridity is a valuable analytical tool for analyzing art and a living and evolving method for creating and experiencing art, with ramifications for decolonial futures. Furthermore, viewing hybrid art as an opportunity to create resistance, identity formation, and dialogue, scholars and practitioners alike can better recognize the lasting effects of colonization on Indigenous cultures, honor the strength of these cultures, and support the creative and political rebirth and revitalization of Indigenous ways of being in the world. The paper ultimately stresses the significance of using contextualized and community-sensitive applications of hybrid forms, as they should be viewed as aesthetic and embodied histories that are political and provide a forum or pathway for collective transformation.