The following article will cover three contemporary notions of identity and power in Central Asia through the use of post-Soviet contemporary art studies. Case studies will consist of topical artworks on the thematics of mankurtism, monuments and marketing within post- Soviet Central Asia. The themes transition from what has been seen as an erasure of long- standing cultural tradition, language and lifestyle by Soviet colonisation, known as mankurtization in Chingiz Aitmatov’s literary language. After which, crucial in the creation of memory, fostering allegiance and modern credence has been the indoctrination of new identities. Based on nation-building while still under the Soviets, propagandising through monuments has been an example of this. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, borders were drawn for the Central Asian Independents. Nation-building was already complete, having begun under the Soviets. What came next was a repurposing of existing tools by nation-branders left behind by the Soviets and the marketing of new identities both internally and internationally. The practice of nation-branding emerged in the mid 1990s, shortly after Central Asia’s independence. Marketing of Central Asia was aimed at building internal and international identities which have been the product of public relations campaigns, as well as government and the elites’ exercise in power. Despite the recent shared history of the region, post-independence growth has been uneven, due to the influence of geopolitics and the adoption of international models of state governance. My arguments will stem from the examination of several artist practices from different Central Asian countries coupled with their current political discourse. My aim is to show that complete identity erasure and reconstruction has not happened, but rather there has been a selective forgetting and privileging by the new elites in an attempt to solidify the importance of one’s standing on an international platform.

After providing a brief account of the evolution of the Indian feminist movement, I move on to analyse the development of the perception of Indian women, first through the lens of scholarly writings, and then through Indian films and TV series. Identifying distinct trends in the academic analyses of Indian women from the 1980s onwards, I collocate these writings within the larger framework of feminist discourses. The pervasive influence that scholars exert on the perceived identities of Indian women, shaping them in accordance with their own theoretical frameworks, becomes thus evident. Earlier studies, mainly adopting a structural paradigm and assuming the image of the Brahmanical woman as point of reference, allude to the dichotomy of ‘woman as goddess/woman as whore’, and can be associated with second-wave feminism; studies from the ‘90s onwards, endorsing an increasingly complex framework, have given voice to those women who do not conform to the Brahmanical value system, and have been correlated to third-wave feminism. While scholarly writings departed from the binary framework within which the image of Indian women is often caught, a similar shift cannot be distinctly observed in the film industry, which responds to the demands of the collective imagery. This poses queries about the extent to which academic discourses are representative of Indian women’s identities or rather of the current Western zeitgeist, and about the power imbalances that are perpetuated by ‘othering’ Indian women through making them repeated objects of study.

In this essay I propose a reading of the female body in art as a locus for the display, the negotiation and ultimately the overcoming of gendered and racial dialectics of ‘othering’. First, from post-medieval until pre-colonial times, white female bodies depicted in European art largely represented a gendered, sexualised ‘other’ to the Western male gaze. Successively, with the unfolding of sexual politics of colonialism, non-European female bodies on canvas became metaphorical grounds for the unravelling of racial confrontations between colonisers and colonised. Finally, in the postcolonial era, it appears that women not only subvert, but entirely disregard the subject-object dynamics that for centuries constrained them to being passive objects. From paintings by contemporary female artists in Telangana (India), it emerges that women appropriate art, expressing their own subjectivities unapologetically and independently. Overcoming at the same time the gendered marginality conferred to women in European art, and the racial dialectics of ‘othering’ pursued through gendered colonial narratives, these artists represent an eminent example of decolonisation in praxis.

In the contemporary milieu, the purpose, meaning and definition of colour is exclusively different. Without understanding its socio-cultural-anthropological relevance and peculiarities, it normally or profoundly used in diverse level with various perspectives. Thus, it degenerated merely as an element of pleasing by considering its extraneous beauty. Actually, most of the animals have not the abilities to identify colours; with some exceptions that they were only identifies red and black colours. Colours also bear some incredibly mysterious believes. While evaluating the colours in primordial art forms, its significances related with primitive man " s straight attempt to comprehend the universe, environment and his race itself. On a wider level, the colours of environment affect behaviour a nd mood. Nature with its colours makes a person as livelier. The colours of the interior environment wherein a person live or work influence in just the same way as those in the natural world always did. The colour concepts of Kerala are visible in the face, body paintings of performers in folklore-rituals and mural paintings. In Kerala Folklore-rituals the face painting is termed as Mukhathezhuthu. The paper is an attempt to explore the genetics and politics of colours. There will also be an effort to examine the psychological concepts of colour and the paper also focuses the colour concepts in Western folklore rituals and in Eastern Kerala folklore-rituals special reference with Face colouring or " Mukhathezhuthu'.