1001 UnMasked ~ hyper-real portraits of gender

1001 UnMasked ~ hyper-real portraits of gender brings together individual perspectives on gender and sexualities aurally and visually. What does it mean to be a man or a woman in the 21st century? What are the spaces in between these binaries?  What is masculinity or femininity other than a culturally specific performance?

Till early last year I was calling this body of work Mas(k)culinities for reasons that seemed right at the time. Masculinity is stigmatized and problematized and I sought different sexualities to explore the breadth of being male. During this period voices and images of women were included to elaborate masculinity from their perspective. Soon I realized that fissures and scars caused by these simplistic binaries run very deep within all of us. Obliged to play out the ‘normative’ roles assigned from the time of our births onwards, is a patriarchal hegemony that has to be challenged. Individual point of views that encompass realities beyond dictates of the mainstream is the only way to disrupt this control. We have to create safe spaces for celebrating the ‘human’ in all its manifestations rather than be threatened by difference. Continue reading 1001 UnMasked ~ hyper-real portraits of gender

HyperReal… Mas(k)culinities

What is real and what isn’t?

“Are you a man?” said Lady Macbeth to her husband, Macbeth. Using this as a title I hash tagged my Instagram #masculinity #mask_culinity; a banana skin on pink lace. I was playing tongue and cheek, using an age old cliche of banana/phallus as a provocation of values synonymous with English Renaissance! These terms are still used freely in playgrounds and classrooms and bedrooms. Gender specific roles as demanded by society become iconic masculinity or femininity. And this song and dance, performance on demand changes from culture to religion to class. Continue reading HyperReal… Mas(k)culinities

Connections ~ shake and shimmy

Thousand and One Nights theme wandered from Efteling and proliferated Olivier’s bedroom in no time. His dreams pulsed with qanun and oud. In his early teens, at a hotel lobby in Cario, dance of the belly uncoiled his kundalini. Olivier has been shaking and shimmying this awakened serpent ever since.

Continue reading Connections ~ shake and shimmy