Visual Artist Portfolio
Negotiating Self | Editorial Shoot
This photo essay is about identity, and perhaps the multiple identities that one has to deal with. Taking the symbolism of clothes as identity markers that we choose to wear in a specific context and discard at another, I have attempted to tell a visual story of the identities we don, which often emanate from the roles we play. However, a limitation in this essay is that although clothes is a fitting symbol for the shape-shifting nature of identity, it fails to capture how sometimes, identity is not that easy to discard. Class identity or gender identity, for example, is sticky and not as easy to get out of as it is to peel off a jacket. And identity is as much negotiated by the self as it is by the ‘other’. Taking the identity ‘northeast’ as the point of departure, here is an attempt to visualize a photo story, thinking about identity and its place in our everyday lives.
2018
We have stereotyped a complex region with a flattened idea of homogeneity
Identity is always created as an opposition to something
Initial research and development notes: Listing keywords for what sets northeast India apart from mainland India ? And how best to flesh out that identity. Why is it that the collective identity of the northeast brings such powerful reactions? Whenever the term is put out there, there is always a struggle to either discredit it, critique it, break it down, reclaim it or fight against it. As someone from the northeast or from the ‘mainland’, another equally vacuous word that is used to describe any Indian not from the region, meeting ‘the northeast’ has never been a peaceful coming together. In some contexts, you are a Nepali woman and in others, your ‘Asian’ identity takes precedence.
