“The book reads not only as a strong collection of unwritten narratives, but also as a critique of art history’s exclusion and tokenization of artists of South Asian descent. The organization of the book prepares the audience with theo- ries to rethink their own understanding of the production of art histories. One of the strengths of the book is the intimacy of the narration. Patel is aware of the limited reach of his academic language and makes challenging theoretical discussions accessible through his use of tone, through which readers can feel as if they were having a casual conversation with a close friend. ”

“...Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Art Histories is a valuable contribution to this growing body of literature that attempts to expand the parameters of art history and its constituent subfields, employing “affirmative criticality” and “productive failure” as methods to produce a more ethical, entangled, and transparent practice of writing (art) history. The title of the book provides a sense of this messier, expanded field, marking the text’s distance from monographic or movement-based studies of South Asian art while underscoring failure as a queer strategy and transnationalism as lived experience, through which the author understands artwork as subject (not object) and region as transcending established notions of national belonging or bloodlines. Throughout the book there is a concerted effort to challenge the logics and practices of globalizing art history through an additive, pluralist approach informed by mainstream multiculturalism.”

“Patel’s project calls attention to neglected histories, while simultaneously dismantling the processes of circumscribing identity-based discourses via axiomatic, geographic, and appearance-based methods of determining belonging [...] Throughout the text, Patel demonstrates how imperative it is for scholars to articulate our situatedness, not only for the sake of transparency, but because it enriches cross-cultural, interdisciplinary exchange and highlights issues around cultural translation. Patel’s reworking of the discursive framing of canon formation is a significant intervention not only within South Asian art, but also for art history, visual studies, and conceptions of identity more broadly. Patel’s commitment to transparent, intersectional, hybrid, adaptable, self-reflexive, and critically engaged methods models much-needed interventions into art history, visual studies, and discourses of identity.”

“...advances an original , rigorously self-reflexive, and provocative argument for the formulation of a New South Asian Art History conceived through the lens of queer theory and queer subjectivities”

“Wide ranging in his historical and methodological investments, Patel is modelling a new kind of art history, notable less for temporal and/or geographical coherence than for its sophisticated critical approach.”

“Patel is a person through whose eyes one learns to see anew with one’s own.”

“In his provocative engagement with queer subjectivities, Patel’s intervention does not only create new potentialities for the study of South Asian Art, but he also proposes an urgently needed reimagining of art historical methodology.”