Jimnah Kimani
The immediate surrounding play a very big part in what I do. India provided new dimensions to how I work, absorbing points of interest from the day-to-day life of Delhi. I treat my work like what some might call a diary. In addition to the differences, I have tried to capture my feelings and impressions about Delhi.
Masooma Syed
It is a fascination with diverse contrasting materials in terms of their innate features or certain predetermined social implications that shape my visuals. These are crafted in a way that gives me all the pleasure of experiencing different moods and emotions like the delicate, gentle and careful handling of the human hair of my fellow artists during the residency. Stitching the hair together has been a very docile activity on an intimate scale in contrast to working with the explicit red chillies designed in a bold fashion of a necklace.
Another piece 'to sir with love' is made of road side pebbles, simply covered by glitter was a gradual activity of picking the pebble one by one, glitter it and put it next to the other, feels to me therapeutic and my sense of place, being here in this land 'Delhi'.
Sumedh Rajendran
The self-divisions caused by the colonialist subjugations and their subtle and narrow reinterpretations, a drama is being played out in the day-to-day life of the marginalized as a social desire.
Mithu Sen
A story of a girl
Who made a point before sleep,
To dream of a story about herself.
Another story, another night.
And the story of every single story
Continued every night
She had never dreamt a single story twice.
Her motto was 'new night, new story'.
This is Aruna Shanbaug revisited. Her story has been repeated several times in the 30 years since she was raped and has been lying in semi- coma at Mumbai hospital. Aruna's condition and circumstances have not changed for years.
Aruna was on duty one November night in 1973 when a MAN accosted her, wrapped a dog chain round her neck and while beating her, RAPED her brutally. She was almost strangled but lived having suffered hypoxic damage to the brain, because of which she has ever since, continued to live in a 'neither alive nor dead' existence. Reacting to stimuli, but unable to otherwise communicate.
That MAN took her earrings and watch and left her there bleeding he also took with him her power of speech, her capacity to move, her eyesight and her memory .Her mental faculties are dead. She has healthy eyes but cannot see. The very fact that she can scream and cry, shows that she has healthy vocal chords, yet she cannot speak. She has not walked for last 30 years and her bones have twisted. Her teeth are rotting. The hospital has to stitch special cloths for her, as her skin is like fine parchment and gets easily bruised she presently lies, desolate, lifeless and helpless. Now, at 54, Aruna remains in a kind of semi-conscious limbo .She lives in a twilight zone.
That man, who raped her, was freed after seven years of imprisonment for stealing and having tried to harm her fatally. He was never tried for rape because no one lodged a complaint and during the medical examination, Aruna's HYMEN was found intact. THE COURT DECIDED THERE WAS NO RAPE.
'Because she could not testify, he got away with a light sentence, and she lives unhappily ever after'. This must be the last word said about practically every case of rape. This crime has the effect of silencing the victim one way or another .A rape victim will not -or cannot- speak for fear of reprisal or of being shunned. In addition, there is the humiliation, and the sensation of profound defilement, both unspeakable.
The doctor whom she was engaged, after two years, moved on even her family has abandoned her. She was tossed between a convalescent home and the hospital. Hopelessly alive to pain, hunger and terror from that fatal night. Today, she SCREAMS at the sound of a MAN'S VOICE her LAST LIVING MEMORY.