PERFORMANCE INSTALLATION

THERE’S AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
2025 2023 
 
YEAR2025

DEVELOPED FOR
Cabane B, Bern

PERFORMANCE TIME
∼10 minutes

TEXT COLLABORATIONNandini Tripathy

PHOTOSGia Han Le

CURATORSAarabi Kugabalan, Samira Gollin

WITH THE HELP OFTanguy Troubat, 1/2 of Souplex Atelier

SPECIAL THANKS TOCyan Huescar, Vincent Grange, Maude Renevier, Hsuan Lee, Camille Bellmas, Paola Costa, Collectif Kimera

Exploration of the intersection & tension between the identity of the oppressed & the oppressor, focusing on the enduring impact of a language the narrator does not fully consider her own. Through four fictional characters, she explores different aspects of her identity.
   Her upbringing in a military household, with its enduring colonial legacy, and her exposure to the hierarchy of the military, caste system and gender politics have deeply influenced her language in oral, body and fashion aspects, reflecting a lingering colonial and institutional influence. She examines how hierarchy and the imposition of a non-native language play in shaping her identity.
    Starting with self-inquiry and introspection, this presentation serves as a foundation to understand the complexities of an intersectional identity and the short and long term impacts of historical and present-day narratives and events on individual identities.


Cutlery hands no.1
Eating with cutlery in Indian military culture stems from colonial influence, replacing traditional hand-eating to mirror British etiquette and discipline.
Cutlery hands no.2
Eating with cutlery in Indian military culture stems from colonial influence, replacing traditional hand-eating to mirror British etiquette and discipline.
Manicured landscape and flowers
Gardens in Indian cantonments reflect British colonial aesthetics, showcasing control, order, and imperial dominance. Common flowers in army gardens such as dahlia, pansies and chrysanthemums were brought in by the British for their aesthetic appeal, and absorbed into India’s horticultural palette, especially in cantonments with structured landscaping. 
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.


Double entendre
Wedding saree and diploma certificate
Double entendre
Wedding saree and diploma certificate
Curry motif
“Curry” is a Western term that oversimplifies South Asian cuisine, referring mainly to a spiced sauce made from ingredients like tomato, onion, ginger, garlic, and sometimes chilli. Ironically, both tomato and chilli, now central to many curries and Western stereotypes of Indian food respectively, were introduced to the subcontinent by Portuguese colonizers in the 16th century.
Biodata fields
In arranged marriages in India, a CV or biodata is often circulated to find a suitable match based on factors like financial status, class, and caste. 
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.


Specks of water from various sources symbolise the hybridity of the narrator’s language—shaped by multiple influences rather than a single, pure origin. The lotus, a symbol of purity in Hinduism, breaks down due to the specks—signalling cultural transformation as traditional symbols absorb new influences. The stones reflect the violence tied to water access under India’s caste system. Even today, upper-caste people kill those from lower castes for using their water.

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.


The narrator’s use of Hinglish (a macaronic hybrid of Hindi & English) and the Latin script to write Hindi (her mother tongue) inspired her to reverse the process—using the Devanagari script to write English. This act reclaims her hybridised mother tongue while critiquing both Hindi and English as languages tied to fascist and colonial power.
The Devanagiri-inspired Latin font has been used popularly globally to showcase Indianness. It is used here to signify the exoticness of the language and culture.  
CHARACTER OF WANDERER
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, 
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.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES