Annah, Infinite

Khairani Barokka

• Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781917126045
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

This is an escape story.' Annah, Infinite turns dominant narratives of Paul Gauguin's famous painting Annah la Javanaise (c.1893-94) on its head. The work argues a simple point: there is the possibility that the portrait is a depiction of a pained child. In highlighting the plausibility of this particular scenario in light of how contradictory 'facts' surrounding Annah's life have been assembled in historical narratives, the work draws attention to how ablenormativity functions within arts institutions to mask colonial abuses. Taking a closer look at the ways in which Annah la Javanaise, with its attendant mythologies of Annah the person or people, circulates in the world: as commodity of the global financial market, and simultaneously, as contradiction of tropes regarding disabled, Southeast Asian girls in the 'developing world'. An incisive look at how colonial ableism, racism, and sexism have kept violent legacies on museum walls, it shows empathetic possibilities for imagining otherwise and charts histories of resilience and of disabled people's longstanding activism. Interspersed with the author's own poetry, fiction, and visual art on the painting's subject, this is a book of emotional heft. It asks us all to acknowledge the possibility of pain in every single portrait, as well as the possibility of escape

Table of contents

• Praise for ANNAH, INFINITE
• Praise for the Author
• ANNAH, INFINITE
• Cover Description
• Contents
• Content Warning
• Safety Message from Annah #0.346439
• Notes on Language
• Introduction: Selected Annahs
• Chapter One: Caption: Annah/s Infinite
• Chapter Two: Complex Pain, Pictorial Forms
• We Burn Disbelief
• The Pained Archive
• Nightmares of 1965
• annah, three months before escape (annah #835)
• Chapter Three- Of Java
• Interlude One: Queering and Cripping Time
• Chapter Four: La Fille Française: A Child of Thirteen
• Chapter Five: In a World Where No One is Voiceless, the Soulbody Yells Through the Nerves
• Interlude Two: Queering and Cripping Time
• Our Language Opens Up
• Annah #0.000000015 attends the first Indonesian Women's Congress, in 1928
• Chapter Six: Threatening Systems of Duress
• State Violence and Moneybanks
• The International ‘Development’ Industry and Art Market
• Some Months Earlier, or Annah #24,957 Observes a PhD Thesis
• Chapter Seven: Annah As Rupture
• Interlude Three: Queering and Cripping Time
• Annah #8,923 floats next to me on a trip to Royal Gallery X
• Chapter Eight: Annah/s Onwards
• annah #333,333,333 and me
• Annah #1,567,732 moves through Harum
• Selected References
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• About TAP