Queens

Body as a vessel

Continuous changes with the fading body has always been part of my early encounters. One searching this reality within anatomical ,scientifically structures creates the encounter of “ideal body image”.

 

Insecurities, social enigmas around body and its psychological intermingling .Identity and its embodiment within the sphere of physicality.
Gender , sexuality , socio-political encounters ruptured in early phase of encounters. These exits as an expressionistic data base , a personal diary;dates, to personal retaliations , through medium of drawings.

 

Political existence of the body and the taboos of accepting the nude and the naked became the main focus in the early stages. Within the constant institutional pressure that forbids the students to engage in actual nude studies was the main focus in the early stages.

Engagements with the Bangalore queer community. Interviews of few queer women, their stories of marital abuse (heterosexual marriages). Existence of the role of queer women and the rights of an individual’s body has been the question that created these autobiographical portraits of women that came as a series.(three years of research)

 

 

Queens : the depression room

This spacial conduct was built in for Kochi biennial 2016 edition. Wall panels consisting of female figurative’s starring /gazing intently into the viewers eyes

“look at me I exists”.

Desires, choices of those desires. Stories of encounters of women , their narratives reciprocated within these autobiographical bodies

“choices are limited “

“Choice to desire ,sexuality, virginity. Choice to partners , love between women , to live or to die . Choice to be born , give birth or not . There are no choices but mere decisions “

 

graphic scribbles on each walls contains scripts as ;

“I am not a field to plant your seed”
“I am molested”
“I am in love with a women”
“I am not porn”

 

 

Some scribbles indicate “me? ” in Sinhala .

there is no light so open your eyes”

Within the dark gloomy ambiance , lives the existence of these bodies. Are they mere bodies or are they living .

A panel made using package boards , represents queens in a card pack .This object itself carries a formation of a closet / Changing room .

The materials that are mostly used in this work are particularly thrown wrapping paper, Cardboard, packaging boards and feminine materials such as sanitary napkin wrappers, embroidery, cosmetics have been used. The materials bring in the existence of their own individualistic nature that tends to co relates with the subjectivity

 

these textures resembles different roles , identities of women . As a mother , daughter , lover, germination-or , destruction,”

changing area

 

Let us gamble , shuffling through the deck .

 

“At times she wanted to dress like a man , or encounter the society as a man. Their exists masculinity within her . But revealing such desires needed to kept silent”

 

 

Something for your imagination

When inside comes outside? when the Hyde reveal its layers. The work contains photo performances, circulated within social media platforms to understand the emission and receiving to them

Forgotten people ,Red

Mythology , oral histories reveals ambiguity. They represent identity and narratives tore encounter and in search of them represented at present times. As Vyasa recites history repeats itself , each encounter at given time interlinks with the other. These chakkra of identities are universal , yet their individual encounter diversified.

Madhavi: A woman or a child traded by her father for cattle. She is the great ancestor of Pandavas and Kauravas . She teaches forgiveness, compassion , love after enduring many hardships.

Surpanaka: Mutilation, shamed, Righteousness causing annihilation , what has she gained ? . She chose the man yet in the name of dharma it was for righteousness.

Surpanaka: Mutilation, shamed, Righteousness causing annihilation , what has she gained ? . She chose the man yet in the name of dharma it was for righteousness.
Surpanaka, the queen whose nose head was mutilated in the sign of virtue. The existence of such customs till the present times
Urvashi: A person with utmost beauty . Mystical , objectified for her inner desire or is it the desire of the beholder. This desire turns into vengeance , or the norm of ‘sinful desire’.
Shikandi: Born to a family whom desired a male heir. Taught to live as a male persona. She her self later becomes a trans-gendered women / man . They were pride , honored , powerful, elegant.

Red graced upon the floor of each character embodies shakthi. Throughout history we encounter shakthi . In many levels she generates energy to carry on life.

Performance enacted in an outdoor space. The presence of the actual women and the mythical characters of women, connecting each presence of them with past, present and perhaps transcend to a similar existentialism to the future been the locus of the act.

Due to the natural weathering process: on the surface of the work created an organic formation of fungus. That began to eaten up the figurines creating distortion. The slow death of existence, memory and the organically process of nature’s course were observed with time