Did you get a chance to attend Gender Bender this weekend? Sandbox Collective, The Ladies Finger and Goethe Institute, Bangalore collaborated to bring 12 exciting gender-bending arts projects! If you missed it, here are some of the fun things that went on this weekend.
Welcome to Gender Bender 2016!
More welcome.
Seen above is Deepikah R Bhardwaj. Here The Good Girl | Bitch Please project was a series of cool video installations and artworks through which she questioned the limitations women pose on themselves and other women.
We hung out outside Kokila Bhattacharya’s work, a set of beautiful media illustrations put together in a cycle and listened to the song composed by her friend Animesh, and written by her.
The Reading Room, by Kadak Collective, a group of 8 south Asian women artists, was always super busy, and a site of much eager jostling.
Kadak’s installation included a series of graphic narrative shorts, visual essays and illustrations about many many things, including growing up intersex, examining how women negotiate spaces in cities, and choices of remaining single vs getting married.
Seen here is a wonderful project by Morgan Campbell and Nayana Udayshankara which drew attention to Bangalore’s women bus conductors, (many of whom have been on the job since 1992!).
Not only did it record the life histories and stories of these women conductors, but also linked the public bus to changing dynamics between the experience of gender and the experience of the city.
Then there was Revelations XX, by Padmini Ray Murray, a project working to restore the forgotten histories of women who shaped Bangalore and India, using holographs and projections on smoke.
Both evenings also featured many exciting performances to packed audiences.
Neha Singh, who run the online campaign Why Loiter, presented Dohri Zindagi, about two women who explore their sexuality and find gratification in each other. This was a rollicking interpretation of Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha’s short story, using Rajasthani folklore, music, and dance. In the picture above is Neha Singh and Himani Pant.
Urban Turban, a superb physical theatre piece directed by Dhwani Vij, that explored the everyday life of Nagina and Jasmine, two young actors from the Nizamuddin Basti-based arts organisation Aagaaz, who played themselves.
And this untitled work by dancer-choreographer Diya Naidu explored touch and intimacy, inviting the viewer in to experience what happens between two people. Naidu amazed the audience with the unexpected deployment of narrative (where we are all used to abstraction in contemporary dance), wit and surprise.
Photosynthesis by Moonlight, by Varun Narain, was a beautifully bizarre adult enactment with puppetry, of where a botanist finds himself in a conservatory where plants are more human.
And with that wrap, see you next year, at Gender Bender 2017!