PERFORMANCE
There’s anelephant in
the room
YEAR2023
DEVELOPED FOR
Master’s Diploma Show, HEAD Geneva
PERFORMANCE TIME
∼10 minutes
MENTOR
EDITORIAL COLLABORATIONNandini Tripathy
MATERIALAcrylic Sheets, Wood, MDF, Acrylic Paint, Video
PROJECT ASSISTANCEPallavi Keshri, Joseph Curle, Luna Deleani, Maude Renevier
SPECIAL THANKS
Rita Hajj, Joseph Popper
Rita Hajj, Joseph Popper
PHOTO CREDITSGuillaume Collignon, Pau Saiz Soler
It is a stew of layers representing a part of the designer’s mélange of her nature, experiences, critique and observations. Recognising that everyone is influenced by the institutions they encounter, it becomes reasonable to cultivate compassion for all individuals, considering this perspective.
Her upbringing in a military household, with its enduring colonial legacy, & her exposure to the hierarchy of the military, caste system & gender politics have deeply influenced her language in oral, body & fashion aspects, reflecting a lingering colonial & institutional influence. She acknowledges the significant roles hierarchy & the imposition of a non-native language play in shaping her identity.
Starting with self-inquiry & introspection, this initial presentation serves as a foundation to understand the complexities of an intersectional identity & the short and long term impacts of historical and present-day narratives and events on individual identities.
Identity positions of the designer
Includes two hand-painted installations, two GIF montages and the performer-designer (not-in-view)
Due to its scale & layers, the text composition is interpreted in a different form from different viewpoints, working as a metaphor for a layered identity & its perception. The composition is painted on several layers of transparent PVC sheets & distanced from each other to bring another dimension to an otherwise flat piece of typography, hence, working as an artefact.
The typography style are inspired by hand-painted store signage, as a medium to advertise the designer’s identity positions, just like the store signage do.
CHARACTER OF WANDERER
I look
I wave
I lend a hand and a shoulder.
I look
I wave
I lend a hand and a shoulder.
I break a leg too, sometimes.
But that is all.
My words are not words,
they are static blaring in a void.
Their words are white noise.
Our lips form strange shapes,
But that is all.
My words are not words,
they are static blaring in a void.
Their words are white noise.
Our lips form strange shapes,
make unintelligible sounds.
I am unintelligible,
born among them but not quite their own.
There must be a mistake.
I travel across the ocean, searching
deserts, forests, mountains
for a voice,my voice.
Then, one day
I hear light.
Words like diamonds lustrous
with meaning. Words like worship
of a diamond goddess in
a glass case.
My belonging,
is on display.
I am unintelligible,
born among them but not quite their own.
There must be a mistake.
I travel across the ocean, searching
deserts, forests, mountains
for a voice,my voice.
Then, one day
I hear light.
Words like diamonds lustrous
with meaning. Words like worship
of a diamond goddess in
a glass case.
My belonging,
is on display.
CHARACTER OF WATER
I am blue glitter on a yellow day,
I am joy and laughter.
On the other side, I am a purifier,
an elixir sent by gods to cure darkness.
Mysterious, magical, holy, carrying the weight of prayers,
offerings, scattered ashes and duty.
I must distinguish high from low.
I must protect myself from lowly touch, contamination,
from rivers of lowly blood on my hallowed banks.
I must never clean lowly steel from a lowly kitchen,
or fill a lowly glass from a lowly home.
I am eternal,
flowing to a shimmering future
with sediments of an eternal past.
I become while continuing to be.
You are not like me.
If only you could do what I can,
be and become, without fault lines.
But your world is not your own,
your words are not your own,
they are borrowed from other worlds
and other tongues.
They make an other language
and an other you,
suspended in an other life.
I am blue glitter on a yellow day,
I am joy and laughter.
On the other side, I am a purifier,
an elixir sent by gods to cure darkness.
Mysterious, magical, holy, carrying the weight of prayers,
offerings, scattered ashes and duty.
I must distinguish high from low.
I must protect myself from lowly touch, contamination,
from rivers of lowly blood on my hallowed banks.
I must never clean lowly steel from a lowly kitchen,
or fill a lowly glass from a lowly home.
I am eternal,
flowing to a shimmering future
with sediments of an eternal past.
I become while continuing to be.
You are not like me.
If only you could do what I can,
be and become, without fault lines.
But your world is not your own,
your words are not your own,
they are borrowed from other worlds
and other tongues.
They make an other language
and an other you,
suspended in an other life.
CHARACTER OF SMART HOUSEWIFE
I turned 21 recently
Freshly out of university
I was looking for a job.
My parents were looking for a boy.
I found the job.
It is the colour on my forehead,
in the parting of my hair,
on the garment draping my body.
It is the colour of my new job,
the one I was always meant to do.
The requirements are simple,
I must please by serving delicacies
I don’t yet know how to conjure,
I did not train for this, but I can improvise.
Red is how I please.
Tomatoes, juicy like plums, sweet like strawberries,
tart like apples, red like the dot on my forehead,
meeting onions and ginger and garlic
creating new life everywhere,
transfiguring potatoes to dum aloo
chicken to kadhai murg
mince to keema masala
eggs to anda curry
red kidney beans to rajma
lentils to dal tadka.
I was green once, blue
pink and orange and
violet and yellow. I am
red now, only
red forevermore.
I turned 21 recently
Freshly out of university
I was looking for a job.
My parents were looking for a boy.
I found the job.
It is the colour on my forehead,
in the parting of my hair,
on the garment draping my body.
It is the colour of my new job,
the one I was always meant to do.
The requirements are simple,
I must please by serving delicacies
I don’t yet know how to conjure,
I did not train for this, but I can improvise.
Red is how I please.
Tomatoes, juicy like plums, sweet like strawberries,
tart like apples, red like the dot on my forehead,
meeting onions and ginger and garlic
creating new life everywhere,
transfiguring potatoes to dum aloo
chicken to kadhai murg
mince to keema masala
eggs to anda curry
red kidney beans to rajma
lentils to dal tadka.
I was green once, blue
pink and orange and
violet and yellow. I am
red now, only
red forevermore.
The women depicted are drawn from museums, famous artworks, & film, symbolising the ideal Indian woman with features like pale skin, traditionally associated with a ‘good’ & ‘respected’ woman.
North Indian cuisine, often reduced to just ‘curry’, relies heavily on tomatoes, a result of colonisation, brought in by the Portuguese & imposed by the British.
It is inspired by the designer’s upbringing by her parents based in the Indian Army, an institution still deeply rooted in its colonial past. These include portraits of Queen Victoria (under whose rule India was colonised), toast (popular British and Indian military breakfast), use of cutlery (contrasting with Indian hand-eating tradition), English gardens (common in army cantonments) & the marching soldier (societal obedience & conditioning).
CHARACTER OF PUPPET
The Queen is here,
she rules a banquet in my dreams,
she says food must never be chewed
with one’s mouth open,
it isn’t civilized.
She looks at my hands
dipped in dal,
gathering rice in a ball of joy,
and her brows
rise up, up, up, into her hair until
my fingers are forks
and knives slipping
and sliding on steel.
The Queen is here,
she pulls the strings of the waking world.
She soars across the ocean
as her children,
birds of fine feathers and stolen gold.
The waking world spins on a teaspoon,
drinks promises from a teacup.
The Queen is here,
she sits on my shoulder,
watching her words dance on my tongue,
her traditions gloat on my table.
I am two worlds,
I am collision,
I am inherited chaos.
The Queen is here,
she rules a banquet in my dreams,
she says food must never be chewed
with one’s mouth open,
it isn’t civilized.
She looks at my hands
dipped in dal,
gathering rice in a ball of joy,
and her brows
rise up, up, up, into her hair until
my fingers are forks
and knives slipping
and sliding on steel.
The Queen is here,
she pulls the strings of the waking world.
She soars across the ocean
as her children,
birds of fine feathers and stolen gold.
The waking world spins on a teaspoon,
drinks promises from a teacup.
The Queen is here,
she sits on my shoulder,
watching her words dance on my tongue,
her traditions gloat on my table.
I am two worlds,
I am collision,
I am inherited chaos.