Visual Corner
Video Page: Li Chenxi Keeps Up the Fantasy by Renting a Boyfriend
Trying to live up to the expectations of those you care about isn’t easy! Li Chenxi is 27 years old and has been facing pressure from her family to get married. She herself has no such desire and is fine with the way she lives; but to keep those she cares about happy she, like so many of us, finds a creative way to sustain her mum’s fantasy!
By Curated Content
November 3, 2016
Brushstrokes: Fantasy and Kink
No fantasy is wrong. Or sick. Or immoral. Just like good intentions are worthless unless they lead to fruitful actions, wicked fantasies aren’t wrong or sick unless they lead to wicked acts. And no, they don’t have to. That is the point of kink.
By Curated Content
November 3, 2016
Video Page: This Web Series Gave Sex Chat a Whole New Meaning
Little Pappu asks his father innocuous questions about all kinds of things to do with sexuality, and while his papa tries reluctantly at first to address his curiosity, he soon finds light-hearted and honest ways to explain concepts to his son.
By Curated Content
October 3, 2016
Brushstrokes: Dolls Turn Into Real Role Models In the Hands of This Parent
Canadian parent Wendy Tsao took her child’s over-sexualised dolls, removed their makeup and changed their overly done-up hair to turn them into role models from real life. By creating from commonly available dolls lookalikes of real-life women of renown, Tsao explores the idea of playthings having an influential impact on the formation of one’s own identity.
By Curated Content
Brushstrokes: Queer, Undocumented Migrant Artist Uses His Art for Activism
“Yo existo. I exist,” asserts Julio Salgado’s self-portrait drawn with wings that give him identity. Salgado was eleven years old when he crossed the border from Mexico to the United States where he remains an undocumented resident. Risking arrest and deportation if detected, Julio makes art about his experiences of being a queer and undocumented person of colour.
By Curated Content
September 15, 2016
Video Page: DarkMatter’s Poetry and Trans Politics
DarkMatter is a trans South Asian performance duo from New York. Watch them perform their spoken word poetry and chat about their trans politics, traversing issues of gender, race, desire, migration and more that connects to it.
By Curated Content
September 1, 2016
Brushstrokes: This Visual Artist Stirs Up Reality with His Personal Portraits
Now, You Can Go Home is a compilation of photo works created in the past two years and continues to be an open project where each photograph performs a story about explorations of different characters providing glimpses of them in fear, self-acceptance, longing and celebration.
By Curated Content
Brushstrokes: Alok Vaid-Menon’s Stunning Trans Attire
Alok Vaid-Menon is one half of the trans South Asian performance duo from New York, DarkMatter. Vaid-Menon was gender-assigned male at birth, identifies as transfeminine (that is, identifies with femininity to a greater extent than with masculinity) and prefers the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘their’.
By Curated Content
August 2, 2016
Video Page: How to Get the Perfect Bikini Body (Hint: It’s Easy!)
Want the perfect bikini body to flaunt? Or do you just want to be able to wear what you want without worrying about whether you can pull it off? Here’s an easy tip anyone can use.
By Curated Content
Video Page: Arunachalam Muruganantham: India’s Menstruation Man
A short documentary on India’s menstruation man, Arunachalam Muruganantham, who wore an artificial uterus, was left by his wife for five years, and was called a pervert by the neighbours – all in his pursuit to create cheap yet effective sanitary napkins for women who cannot afford safe menstrual hygiene products.
By Curated Content
Video Page: A Day in the Life of India
A short movie with a twist ending, Belle de Jour (meaning ‘Beauty of the Day’, and this one is not the 1967 film by Luis Buñuel) begins by showing a stereotypical middle-class Indian woman who goes to work after taking care of her household.
By Curated Content
June 5, 2016
Brushstrokes: A Day in the Life of Women
This photo feature gives us a glimpse into the lives of women from around the world at their diverse places of work: “Teachers, farmers, businesswomen, politicians, mothers, law enforcers – women and girls contribute every day in many visible and invisible ways.”
By Curated Content
June 5, 2016
Video Page: Find Your Beautiful
While the video’s message of women finding self-worth through beauty can be construed as sexist (our worth can’t be reduced to mere beauty and looks), and it also has the token ‘fat’ woman that one can criticise it for, one also can’t deny that the loving and acceptance of one’s body remains a universal, daily struggle of probably every woman the world over.
By Curated Content
May 1, 2016
Brushstrokes: Married Young
In the Chinese province of Yunnan, ‘early marriage’ is a common phenomenon. Dearth of employment opportunities compels parents to marry off their children before leaving for work in bigger cities. The cultural trend favours early marriage, so there is no social stigma attached to it.
By Curated Content
May 1, 2016
Video Page: Imtiaz Ali’s New Short Film Has a Rockstar
Imtiaz Ali’s 5-minute film begins as any trite gangster flick but rapidly flips things around both in narrative and in audience perception.
By Curated Content
April 18, 2016