things fall apart, meena hasan at the old stone house
This site-specific installation draws inspiration from the fact that British commander Charles Cornwallis, who occupied the Old Stone House during the Battle of Brooklyn, later defeated one of the fiercest opponents of colonialism in India, Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore. Brooklyn-based painter and educator Meena Hasan (born 1987, NYC) has created a series of works to wrestle with the contradictions of history, memory, and image.
Things Fall Apart hails Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel of the same name about the British colonisation of Nigeria, which itself references William Butler Yeats’ 1919 poem about anti-colonial uprisings in Ireland and across the world. Placing the heroic defeats at Brooklyn in 1776 and Seringapatam in 1792 into conversation with each other and this lineage invites us to reflect on the occupations, displacements, and chaos that have brought us to our own moment.
Hasan’s subjects and processes invite viewers into a search for meaning in history. Her paintings of Tipu Sultan artifacts now on display in London, juxtaposed with Cornwallis’ forgotten monument in Chennai, have been cut apart, rearranged, and adorned with the hands of soldiers, prisoners, and the artist herself. Together, they ask us to piece ourselves together within the various layers of disruption, connection, destruction, and creation we have inherited.
Tipu Sultan was a hero and a monster, a tyrant and a freedom fighter, a remarkable success and also a tragic failure. The same can be said for William Alexander, George Washington, or any of the intertwined legacies of colonialism and independence across the globe. Battles in Brooklyn have reshaped South Asia, and vice versa, for centuries. Where we draw the lines around these complex and contradictory histories, and find our places within them, is up to us.
- Dylan Yeats