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Supreme Beings
2026
The Supreme Beings series is a reclamation of the notion of idolatry, presenting reincarnations of radical historical figures who never received justice in their time. The first of the series, Phoolan & Assata is presented as a pairing, connecting centuries’ old Black liberation movements with the age-old Dalit struggle in India through two reincarnated icons, Phoolan Devi and Assata Shakur.
This sculpture is an idolistic reincarnation of Phoolan Devi, a legendary figure of insurgent justice against caste and sexual violence in India. Born into poverty in rural Uttar Pradesh in 1963, she was subjected to child marriage, repeated rape, and systematic humiliation under an upper-caste feudal order. She escaped her husband in her mid teens and entered armed resistance in the Chambal ravines. In 1981, she returned to her village where her gang executed over a dozen Thakur men responsible for her gang rape—an act that transformed her into both outlaw and folk hero.
After a ceremonial public surrender in 1983 that she negotiated the terms of, she was imprisoned for eleven years without trial. Freed in 1994, she converted insurgency into electoral power, winning a parliamentary seat in 1996 in a "bullets to ballots" victory. Her rising power in the political sphere threatened entrenched elites, which led to her assassination by multiple Thakur gunmen outside her home in 2001. Of the eleven accused, only one was convicted, and although he received a life sentence, he was released on bail just two years later. For the Dalit community and supporters of Phoolan’s legacy, this piece of history remains a deep wound and injustice.
This supreme being is Assata Shakur, legendary Black radical and revolutionary who resisted state violence and injustice in the United States. Born in 1947, she came of age amid racial segregation, police brutality, and the criminalization of Black political organizing in New York City. In the late 1960s, she became involved with the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army, advocating for self-determination and armed self-defense against systemic racism. A target of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s covert program designed to destroy Black liberation movements, she was shot and seriously wounded at a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, with a state trooper killed in the exchange. Despite contested evidence and her own account denying responsibility, she was convicted of his murder following a highly politicized and widely criticized trial.
After years of incarceration marked by solitary confinement, medical neglect, and torture, she escaped from prison in 1979 with the help of supporters. Granted political asylum in Cuba in ‘84, she lived the rest of her life in exile, designated a domestic terrorist by the U.S. government. For many within Black radical traditions, Assata Shakur remains a symbol of survival, fugitivity, and unflinching resistance in the face of racialized state power. Her life and work remains central to the Black feminist struggle and the abolitionist visions for a world beyond policing and prisons.