Decolonial World-Making in Luton: How South Asian Muslim Women Artists in Luton Create and Inhabit Multiple Worlds

关于艺术界穆斯林女性的大部分学术研究主要涉及代表性问题，即通过探索负面的刻板印象（Morey和Yaqin，2011年）或在世俗的、占多数的白色地区拥有冲突的身份（Ralph和吉布森，2021年）。虽然这是一项非常重要的工作，但框架中往往缺少的是穆斯林妇女的声音和经历，她们正在创作的艺术作品超越了表现和被表现的需要，她们不认为性别、种族、宗教和国籍的多重身份是冲突的。在挑战表现的局限性和对有争议的身份的叙述时，我的研究将探讨以卢顿为基地的南亚散居艺术家的作品，他们呈现而不是代表多种经验，并在这样做时颠覆了关于代表的话语。我将探讨这些艺术家的创作实践如何破坏英国穆斯林妇女的经验本质化的尝试。通过专注于地方，我的研究还将调查他们的做法是如何改造卢顿作为一个城镇，那里的非殖民地的生活与差异的可能性可以测试和生活是必不可少的.研究的基础是沃尔特·米尼奥洛（2018）的多元宇宙的非殖民地理论，提出了一个世界，其中许多世界是可能的，由土著墨西哥萨帕塔运动阐述.这种国际主义的透镜将被定位在与露丝·威尔逊·吉尔摩（Ruth Wilson Gilmore）的地方制造和情感基础设施的对话中，这些基础设施使物质意识形态和“情感能够或约束的行动”（2022：490）。这些理论框架的结合将有助于探索穆斯林女性艺术家在卢顿创造和居住的非殖民世界的方式，其中差异作为一个事实而不是一个有待解决的问题。我的研究将从英国南亚穆斯林女性的角度出发，并将利用我在过去15年中在创意产业中的现有联系。这项研究将集中于生活在卢顿的穆斯林妇女，卢顿是一个多元的城镇，没有单一的种族占多数（种族动态中心，2013年），穆斯林占总人口的24.6%（2011年人口普查），也是英国政府“拉平”议程的目标领域之一卢顿还因其男性主导的右翼人物故事而在国家媒体上亮相，如汤米罗宾逊和安德鲁泰特（Das 2022）和极端伊斯兰意识形态的支持者（Smith和Gardham 2017）。因此，这项研究将保持在非殖民化和地缘政治的性别，宗教和种族身份，以及英国与多代散居人口，其根源在巴基斯坦，孟加拉国和印度的后殖民国家的关系通知更大的框架内的地方重点。

Much of the scholarship on Muslim women in the arts is concerned primarily with issues of representation, namely through an exploration of negative stereotypes (Morey and Yaqin 2011) or as possessing conflicting identities in secular, majority white geographies (Ralph and Gibson 2021). While highly important work, what is often missing from the frame are the voices and experiences of Muslim women who are producing artistic work that goes beyond the need to represent and be represented, and who do not consider multiple identities across gender, race, religion and nationality as being in conflict.In a challenge to the limitations of representation and the narrative of contested identities, my research will explore the work of Luton-based South Asian diaspora artists who present rather than represent a multitude of experiences, and in so doing subvert the discourse on representation. I will explore how these artists' creative practices disrupt attempts to essentialise the experiences of British Muslim women. By focusing on place, my research will also investigate how their practices are essential to remaking Luton as a town where decolonial possibilities for living with difference can be tested and lived.Underpinning the research is Walter Mignolo's (2018) decolonial theory of the pluriverse that proposes a world in which many worlds are possible, as articulated by the indigenous Mexican Zapatista movement. This internationalist lens will be positioned in dialogue with Ruth Wilson Gilmore's articulation of place-making and the infrastructure of feeling that makes material ideologies and "actions that feelings enable or constrain" (2022: 490). The combination of these theoretical frameworks will facilitate an exploration of the ways in which Muslim women artists create and inhabit decolonial worlds within Luton in which difference exists as a fact rather than a problem to be solved.My research will be led from and by the perspectives of British South AsianMuslim women and will draw on my existing connections in the creative industries over the last 15 years. The research will focus on Muslim women living in Luton, a plural town with no single ethnicity in the majority (Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity 2013), where Muslims make up 24.6% of the total population (2011 Census), and one of the areas targeted by the UK government's Levelling Up agenda (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities 2022).Luton has also featured in national media for its male dominated stories of right-wing figures such as Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate (Das 2022), and proponents of extremist Islamic ideologies (Smith and Gardham 2017). This research will therefore maintain a local focus within a larger framework of decoloniality and geopolitics informed by gender, religious and racialised identities, and the UK's relationship with a multi-generational diaspora population that has its roots in the postcolonial states of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.