Paper short abstract:

DESI EROS is an arts-based phenomenological research study that evokes the meanings of erotic power among South Asian women through surrealist folk art paintings. The art and research findings were created by a transpersonal process of psychic decolonization. They can be viewed at www.desieros.com.

Paper long abstract:

DESI EROS (www.desieros.com) is an arts-based phenomenological research project which asked: “What is the lived experience of reclaiming erotic power among South Asian women, in light of our cultural contexts and ancestral histories?” I collected six diasporic Desi women’s descriptions of reclaiming erotic power, and engaged in a phenomenological data interpretation process of their narratives to unearth core thematic meanings of reclaiming erotic power. Then, I expressed these thematic meanings in the form of surrealist folk art, with South Asian cultural symbols embedded in each painting. I experienced a literal decolonization of my South Asian American psyche while creating this artwork: the symbolic images in each painting emerged by a transpersonal process of being intuitively led by Divine Imagination, which awakened deeper understandings of indigenous, pre-colonial South Asian cultures that I did not know before. After finishing each painting, I conducted research about the cultural symbols of each image, and wrote essays that explicate these cultural symbols and the meaning of “erotic power” in indigenous South Asian cultures. The final artwork and research findings are available on www.desieros.com. They aim to liberate and decolonize the meanings of reclaiming erotic power for Desi women–both personally, as described by each writer’s subjective experience, and collectively, as expressed by our indigenous cultural symbols as Desi people.