Performance
‘Don’t They Realise We are Human?’: The Uneasy Alliance Between Fashion and Feminism
“Historically, feminism and fashion have been pitted against one another,” writes Manjima Bhattacharjya in her book, Mannequin. It’s a dilemma the fashion industry has struggled with for decades – being perceived as flippant, or existing in a vacuum”
By Curated Content
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)
In the video section, watch Tishani Doshi perform one of her most haunting and popular poems ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’. Using the movements of/in body, music and language, it is a powerful expression of Tishani’s expansive vision of resistance, freedom and solidarity in the face of violence.
By Curated Content
The Labor of Expressing Femininity as a Disabled Woman
The nature of the labor that goes into performing femininity is that it’s invisible. Or at least it’s supposed to be. As a culture, we expect women to look glossy and shimmery and smooth. We don’t want to know about the time and money that goes into this presentation.
By Curated Content
September 17, 2018
QUEERNESS AND PRIVACY[1]: BABY I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEVER HOLD BACK FROM ME
For so long, private has meant a place that I was forced to create, claim and carve out to hide away from the public violence. And if I’ve been allowed to further wallow in it then I don’t want to – thank you very much.
By Curated Content
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt.
By Neel
August 14, 2020
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.
By Neel
June 15, 2021
Prescriptions of Proper
Performance and ‘proper’ go hand in hand because every performance has rules and prescriptions, so you can tell whether it’s a good performance or not, whether it’s skilled or not. Otherwise, it appears, you can’t understand or appreciate performance – or know if you’re doing it right!
By Shikha Aleya
January 4, 2021
Prescriptions of Proper
In a world of prescriptions of performance and perfection, there isn’t truly that much space built in to risk non-performance, not being perfect, or to risk not fitting the prescription.
By Shikha Aleya
September 4, 2018
Please Touch: Tactile Art as a Medium of Exploration
Most of us, during childhood, internalised the lesson that sex or pleasure is ‘dirty’ and ‘bad’. Artists around the world are increasingly using ‘tactile art’ to challenge the shame and embarrassment that people feel when they look at their bodies.
By Isha Vajpeyi
August 14, 2020
Outlander: A Review
Time and time again, Galbaldon asks us, through the character of Claire, to remember that we are travelers, we move and are moved by the interactions and environments around us.
By Dana Burton
September 17, 2018
Nanette: Of Universality and Difference
In Nanette, Hannah Gadsby’s hour-long Netflix special that transcends the very notions of stand-up comedy, forces of reclamation, protest, and rage culminate to form a darkly hilarious but heartbreaking diatribe against patriarchy, heteronormativity, violence and marginalisation.
By Anonymous
September 4, 2018
Maraa | The Spirit of a Tree
Maraa means ‘tree’ in Kannada and it is the nature of a tree that we wish to embody, with strong roots, branches in different directions, growing tall but also wilting, dying and beginning again.
By Angarika Guha
October 17, 2024
Katha(k)ar
The governing eyes throughout history have dictated the acceptable forms of the performance of sex.
By Ayushi Dubey
February 15, 2024
I’m a Fennel for Now
“I’m afraid because I bring to bed more than just one soul of a scared conflicted boy. I’m bringing to bed a whole army that not only runs the streets within me but also spills out over my body and the body of the boy next to me.”
By Abdullah Erikat
September 4, 2018