Boodle Fight
The boodle fight is a Filipino military tradition rooted in the precolonial practice of kamayan, a feast consisting of a wide variety of foods, piled high on banana leaves, and consumed collectively with one’s hands. The tradition, itself, is symbolic of the colonization of the archipelago and its peoples, and yet its rootedness in togetherness and abundance remains unchanged.
Indianapolis-based artists Nasreen Khan and Bryn Jackson have collaboratively created this body of work, inspired by four images relevant to Filipino history – The Painted Prince, The Last Supper, The Igorot Sequence, and a Reclining Imelda Marcos – to address the impact of centuries of political and spiritual subjugation on Filipino peoples throughout the diaspora. Using kink as a demonstration of consensual power exchange, the artists’ aim is to reclaim agency in self-representation, to denounce the ongoing exploitation of the Filipino body, and to embrace the contradictions, multiplicities, and intersections of mixed, diasporic existence.
A Brief and Incomplete Index of Symbols
Hot Dogs – A nod to the popularization of the “dog-eating savage” stereotype in the Western imagination. See: The Philippine Exposition at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Hair – Throughout the colonized world, long hair has been seen as a symbol of rebellion against “civilizing” influences, and forced/non-consensual cutting of hair has been a tool of colonial subjugation.
Tattoos – Historically, a visual narrative illustrating connection to family, community, nature, spirituality, and the afterlife. A record of accomplishment. Celebration. Medicine. The Philippines were called "The Islands of Painted People" by Spanish colonizers because of the prevalence of tattoos among the Indigenous people.
Feet – A bratty rebuttal to the sexualization of Asian bodies and the incessant demand for submission.
Sushi girl – A fetishized westernization of the Japanese practice of Nyotaimori, where diners eat sushi off the nude body of a perfectly still female model.
Animals – Ancestral familiars. Medicine. Nourishment. Sport. Morality. Representations of the Divine.
Sets designed by Danielle Joy Graves.
Photography by Rachel Schwebach.
Boodle Fight is made possible with a grant from the Indianapolis Creative Risk Fund, awarded by Central Indiana Community Foundation and funded by the Herbert Simon Family Foundation.