TRUTH DREAM: Breaking Gender Norms through a Phantasmagoria of Lived Desire
How a photo exhibition in Bengaluru narrated lived desires that break through ideals of beauty and ageing, of fixed gender identities and permitted dreams. By Anna Lynn
Leaving Behind the Stardust: Inder Salim and a life sacrificed to art
Performance artist Inder Salim has traversed the profane, the political, and the poetic. Abhimanyu Kumar explores the process behind Salim’s ground-breaking work, where the mundane becomes magical, imperfections are embraced, taboos are broken, and for fleeting moments, the audience and the artist share a sense of transcendence.
Poems by Aardhra Chandran: ‘Concrete trucks rumble past his fence, shaking the loose teeth / in his jaw, spitting black diesel smoke onto his holy basil plant. // He measures his life not in years, but in missing trees—/The neem chopped for wood, the mango that died of thirst.’