Al-An deSouza
b. 1958, Nairobi, Kenya
Rumpty-Tumpty Series #5, 1997
Digital print from film
Courtesy the artist and Talwar Gallery, New York | New Delhi

Al-An de Souza’s work restages and examines colonial legacies in various media and disciplines, including photography, text, performance, digital media, and pedagogy.

In 1997, de Souza photographed the Trump Taj Casino in Atlantic City, NJ—a failed business that touted itself as the largest casino in the world and the “eighth wonder of the world.” Reprinted from the digital scans of the original negatives, Rumpty Trumpty – replete with the physical wear and tear of photographic film – appropriates orientalist tropes to index the fantasy of exotic, non-Western authenticity that the casino architecture exploits. Rumpty Trumpty transposes and complicates the mechanism of cultural appropriation, offering a glimpse into de Souza’s broader body of work that cultivates a decolonial aesthetic through strategies of humor, fabrication, and (mis)translation.