New Exhibit in Brooklyn Draws Inspiration from a South Asian Connection to the American Revolution

Things Fall Apart: Meena Hasan at the Old Stone House opens May 2, 2025. On view through July 6, 2025

Paintings by local artist Meena Hasan explore intertwined histories of colonialism in South Asia and North America

BROOKLYN, N.Y., May 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Things Fall Apart: Meena Hasan at the Old Stone House opens May 2, 2025. This site-specific contemporary art installation draws inspiration from the fact that British commander Charles Cornwallis, who occupied the Old Stone House during the Battle of Brooklyn, later defeated one of the fiercest opponents of colonialism in India, Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore. Brooklyn-based painter and educator Meena Hasan (born 1987, NYC) has created a series of works to wrestle with the contradictions of history, memory, and image. The Old Stone House museum commemorates the Battle of Brooklyn, the first and largest battle of the Revolutionary War on August 27th, 1776.

Things Fall Apart hail's Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel of the same name about the British colonisation of Nigeria, which itself references William Butler Yeats' 1919 poem about anti-colonial uprisings in Ireland and across the world. By placing the heroic defeats at Brooklyn in 1776 and Seringapatam in 1792 into conversation with each other and this lineage, Hasan invites us to reflect on the occupations, displacements, and chaos that have brought us to our own moment.

"As an artist, being able to play with, reimagine and transfigure the terrors of our realities can bring the work meaning," said local artist Meena Hasan. "Tipu Sultan was a hero and a monster, a tyrant and a freedom fighter, a remarkable success and also a tragic failure. I want to take that strength and both revere and critique it. The paintings invite us to think about the fragility and malleability of our written histories. Painting them is a way for me to wrestle to find my place within the legacies of colonialism in both South Asia and North America."

Things Fall Apart: Meena Hasan at the Old Stone House will be on view Friday-Sunday 12:00 - 4:00 PM or by appointment at Old Stone House & Washington Park, 336 Third St, Brooklyn, NY 11215. For more information visit theoldstonehouse.org/exhibitions/ The opening reception for the exhibit will take place on May 2, 2025 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Contacts:

Dylan Yeats, Ph.D. co-curator: 646-831-8047, [email protected]

Meena Hasan, artist: [email protected]

Kim Maier, Director, Old Stone House: 718-768-3195, [email protected]

SOURCE The Old Stone House