Performance

In this acrylic on paper Rabbani gives a full-bodied form to a man in residence, who is seen performing for another male observing him from a rooftop. By showing a voluptuous male form in blush color tones, and using strokes to give flesh to details, Rabbani gives us the imagery of sensuality and passion, as well as pride and confidence. The voyeur watching from his roof top sheds light on how often LGBTHIQK+ people are relegated into seeking intimacy without having the safety of space, opportunity, or societal acceptance. Making it near impossible for them to enjoy physical and truly pleasurable connections. Rabbani’s visual wizardry is welcome storytelling in these times where gender and sexuality are finally finding a forum for open discussion and much needed acceptance.

'Coming out' is a piece that mainly focuses on the Transgender identity of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. As a bisexual ally, I have been a long-running supporter of trans, and queer, rights in general, which impelled me to finally create a piece on this wonderful community. This artwork is an attempt to explain the Trans concept using a surreal yet also literal analogy. In the upper picture, you can see a man in a grey smock, who cannot see his own reflection as he looks into the clouded water. He is lost in terms of his gender identity and thus, can only see the ephemeral ripples created by his touch. The bottom picture shows a woman in yellow carrying the transgender flag (blue, pink and white), swimming up towards the surface of the water. The idea is that she is coming out of the water as his true self i.e., a transwoman. 'Coming out' is based on subtle LGBTQ+ colour references to better explain the queer, especially transgender, analogy. For example, the colour yellow represents a non-gender binary, and the rainbow-coloured school of fish represent the iconic queer flag. There are many other such references hidden all over the work for the viewer to explore.

The artwork is a representation of two non-gender confirming individuals. They are happy as a couple and as an individual. They know how much of their lives they can share with each other. The inspiration is definitely to form a society where we can easily and harmlessly express ourselves as an individual and as a couple. There is much more to a relationship than the binary system we follow. We are merely digging the amazing human emotions. Relationships when carried out in a safe and healthy environment can also help you rediscover and find your own self.

Ardhanarishwar' is a Hindu deity whose one half is that of lord Shiva and the other half is Goddess Parvati. In its very essence it speaks of the union of masculinity and femininity thereby forming a very gender fluid and gender nonconforming entity. Yet in today's world where the deity Ardhanarishwara is worshipped by many, gender fluidity and gender non conformity is condemned. The Trans community still faces violence and is shunned away from society as a pariah. In my work I tried put out articles of various instances of violence against the Trans community who are even being murdered for their very being, and how that is contradictory to our faith and beliefs thereby showing how we as a society are putting chains on Ardhanarishwara.

Anup Let student of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Kala Bhavana aims at dealing with the sensitive issues related to gender sexuality & patriarchy society which are closely associated with me. Other than this I never believe in the conception that gender sexuality is the only source that defines one’s identity. This is rather decided by my family & society it’s very similar to what there’s use as a surname, mother’s name, home adders, what are future plans, one’s marital status etc. This is layers listed by society to define one’s identity. The way life proceeds these layers do where, with time. Only senesces remains and becomes the only permanent source of one’s own identity. Then the questions arise what is uniformity in identity? Although is a new term since now but closely deals with debunking sense of revealing. The sense of revealing one’s own identity is uniformity which is not familiar with the acquaintance because that is what cannot be decoded from the exterior. And this introspection of debunking is a sense of realisation essentially important for one’s individuality & personality. What I am? & who I am? Is the necessary question which is needed to be answered? This layer is completely irrelevant to the layers being decided by society. This is what you feel from within, the say contained zone. What does it feel? What it believes is the uniformity within identity although looking into a present social situation sometimes I feel like it should remain in some cases enclosed. Although for me it’s a healthy exercise equivalent to the search for fresh breath. Almost everyone deals with certain assimilation &introspection.

The miniature form of art is a rich amalgamation of religion, culture and tradition which has been widely accepted and appreciated across many religions of the country. With this painting I wish to draw the juxtaposition between acceptance toward homosexuality which is as organic as the everyday life's kaleidoscopic events which are captured by this art form.

Sometimes it's become very difficult to express what we are thinking. We use different languages to express it. I have done this work in mixed media, I have experienced some unexpected situations in my past. So I am sharing those experiences through my artworks. I was criticised many times for wearing pink colour. I think there is some politics still going on with colours in our society, people are creating boundaries between men and women, they claim that this colours for men and this colours for women. The pink colour is still considering for women. Really?? Pink colour is not for men? I used pink colour as a metaphor in my work that, it is also for men.

Through my work, I try to explore the problems of queer identity in a society dominated by heterosexual norms. I seek to expand and explore the tabooed conception of homosexuality by unveiling the body, treating it as a tender landscape, and generating new references to queer identities. Working in the method of automatism, I don’t use any layout, expressing my private emotions and sensibilities freely and without any control of prior thought. I am very careful while choosing materials for my works. My recent sculptural dresses, which indicate no specific gender orientation, male or female, are, in fact, the sensible screens, which both conceal and reveal my fragile emotions and desires, always in conflict with the society.

Every human being has desire, love and affection in his life. These are the truth of life. They want to bind himself in the bond of love. It is also associated with biological needs. Usually women and men with attraction to the opposite sex. The attraction and love for the same sex is evident in this painting. So dedicated love to each other. It is the story of two women falling in love. They want to satisfy the sexual hunger of life. Thus the attraction towards homosexuality is evident here. Nature seems to have taken part in the union of two women here. In this way the love of two women has been blossomed in the fascination of nature in this painting.

The painting "secret meeting" from the series of LGBTQ, which emerged from my experience during my teen ages. This conflict has had a strong influence on the emotional life of my generation, over the past decade LGBT people have gained more and more tolerance and acceptance in India, I personally think if normal men and women have the right to live in the society with respect then why not a person who belongs to LGBT can live in the society with respect. Here in this painting I use Fernando bolero nude figure, in my art practice I love to recreate old Masters painting with my thought and concept. Colour is very important for my painting. Those water colour tint create a weather or temperament in my painting which represents the moment of intimate.

Deconstructing western dualism, and in turn binary ways of thinking are the center of my mind, as I try to provoke the viewer into questioning the internalized division between nature and human. This dualistic perception, where nature is feminine and culture is masculine, is the base for the gender binary, and in turn gender-based violence, homophobia, and mistreatment of land and ecologies. Examining European landscape painting and cartography as inherently colonial, my work strives to find post-colonial modes of expression informed by eastern aesthetic traditions of flattening the foreground in order to uncover systems and networks at play. How we treat and label the world around us, our ecologies, is very telling to the segregation and systemic oppression of marginalized people. In this work, I explore boundaries and the breaking of divisions, as fluid strokes and abstract patterns occupy the conceptualized dystopic landscape, informed by urban living and the underground worlds that keep the city afloat.

In my work I have seen a community. Those who may be scared or have left a place in the hope of finding a new place. I created that the new place showing a rainbow-colored sky. Which is their new roof, their team leader is showing that sky, look, this is a new day. Here I want to identify homosexuality with the rainbow. And I have shown some tails among them to move the people away from the boundaries of the so-called present age. Which represents the ancestors of man?

This painting explores the eternal connection between what we desire and what leads to despair. Queer people are forced to hide their desires and to censor their feelings. Our unfulfilled desires become the cause for despair, leading to emotional trauma, self-destructive behaviour and depression. It is as if the two are eternally linked, two sides of the same coin. They can exist separately but are somehow always connected. This painting also personifies the strength in our desires which can grow even in the most desperate and desolate surroundings. It shows how desire is born again and again; hope surges and life continues in the cycle. The circle again, my muse!

Observing the current societal outlook towards the queer and those who are not engaged in any kind of conventional relationship I made this painting. In the back of the shirt I made a painting of Radha-Krishna using the Kishanganj painting style which is symbolised in India as a perfect example of love whereas the person wearing it, is down-head as he is not allowed to freely express his own self.

The figures in this artwork are copied and pasted from Fernando Botero's painting. In the family where I was born, God has been acting since I was a child, I have to keep his words in mind in everything, if he gets angry, he will make me a kenno or mosquito with a curse. Even now there is no place where they are not used, from the bus to the wall of the alley adjacent to the drain. He is used in different ways everywhere. If we have pickpocketing on the bus or if we don't win the lottery, we have a democratic right to complain to them and curse the pickpockets and lottery shopkeepers. I have done these ten works together with the title "Act of Gods", where they are acting, and we are directing while smoking. I have never seen them in front of me, I have seen stickers of them so I have made their portraits like stickers, I have made the colours match the events of each picture, which means that I have made the colour palette the emotion of the picture. I don't know what is happening with these drawings together. But God knows for sure. They know everything. Even if they don't want to, nothing happens in this world.

The name of the Artwork is "The Forbidden Love". Acrylic Medium is used for this Painting. People can generally accept the Love of a Man and a Woman. Besides, they cannot accept same sex relationships. A story like that has been shown through this Painting. The Story behind the Artwork is the Love of two Males who are committed in same sex relationship. And our society also cannot accept this kind of Artwork. This Painting shows that people have learner to accept this kind of Artwork. Through this Painting, it has been revealed that society can adopt same sex relations instead of conventional thinking.

In my native language Bangla there are no gendered pronouns or verbs. But Bangla does not have common terminology to describe non-binary people. If Bangla was the only language, I communicated in I’d never have to state preferred pronouns but I would not have a word to call myself either. It is in the coloniser's language that I am able to name myself. The gender binary as we understand it today is a Western construct. Yet from a young age we are taught Bangla grammar in a way that subjects our bodies to this rigid distinction. To tear up and dislocate those pages from a Bangla grammar book in this piece is an act of subversion. I find this dichotomy extremely interesting because our identities are fundamentally constructed through language. In this artwork I try to locate myself linguistically while asserting the freedom of choice afforded by the fluidity of subject positions that stem from my ability to access a multiplicity of cultural and linguistic registers. My queer body is eternally a site of contested and layered signification.

This work is painted in high hills of Rashol near kasol where I work. During corona lock down its my abode. Actually no specific extra ordinary story behind this work. I was alone, meditating in village, occasionally thinking about myself, and my life, in some ecstatic state I decided to paint my portrait.

In this painting the first girl want to cross the societal boundaries to love her beloved (second girl), who also have her own societal boundaries. There is a black cat in this picture who is portrayed as the society. This society is stopping them to be together. They don’t accept them, and there is another girl who is holding a bloomed flower in her hand. She is asking them to come out of their barriers and bloom together, neglecting the social boundaries.

The painting represents the believe in sexuality by birth. The colours of pride flag at the background represents Red=Life, Orange=Healing, Yellow=Sunlight, Green=Nature, Turquoise=Art, Indigo=Serenity. The baby covered in transgender flag represents his/her sexuality by birth i.e. he/she is BORN THIS WAY. The Mother represents as the creator of life but not the creator of babies sexuality or gender. some people are born this way and some people choose their sexuality as LGBTQ.

In my work gender identity and gender typing emerges neither biologically determined nor inevitable, but as a result of moment. Moment interaction with the intermediate social environment. In this work entitled “Sitting with Male Beauty” I want to personify the animal with the male form of beauty. Someone who is raw, aggressive, tender, yet beautiful in appearance. It is characterized by fantasy in a real word environment. I drive my inspiration from poetry and folk tales. My practice predominate interest in this work it has been observation of multipurpose aspects of existence in metropolis body culture of my impression through the image. They are semi-autobiographical excavation of the natural masculinity.

As a human being I am very used to work in a space surrounded by mostly men, it never bothered me. As it has always been bothered others, the society, friends, family and most importantly my colleagues. As the society taught us to be concern for a woman who is without a man. And I was woman without a man but always surrounded by men. In this particular area I have never disappointed myself, but society did. It was a bumpy road (for me) it still is, but it is hard for them (society) to accept that a woman can be romantically and sexually off limit to men specifically. But eventually they (colleagues, men) did get comfortable around me, with my body of a woman and my homosexual identity. This painting is the representation of that balance of comfort and discomfort of while sharing the same bed in an after work scenario.

The work is centre round the themes of clash between the modernity and the eternity. In contrast with the emptiness of so called modernity, I draw the elements from Nature, sometimes use Folk elements or some distinct mythical symbols to construct the language of my art works that explore the beauty of eternity so aptly.

The frame, captured during "Kolkata Pride Walk", tries to reiterate and amplify the core of the theme, "Looking Beyond the Binaries", by portraying the narrative of " Celebrating the Other", thereby breaking apart the rigid layers of "the restrictive binary mind-set" while blurring the boundaries of it by challenging the conventional oppressive "rules" of the society. The frame also depicts a story of resistance and protest against the prevailing norms of rigidity. The foreground showcases a queer person in a dance posture on the streets of Kolkata, while the background represents a group of heterosexual people varying from all age groups. In short, the frame creates a contrasting story of layers, the backdrop being a metaphor of the current society consisting of people from all stages of life who are watching quietly while the "Queer" admires the "Pride in Identity". Let the world watch while they express themselves by pouring their heart out.

It was after I came out to my parents in June 2020 that all the repressed childhood fantasies starting cropping up. I didn't want to wait anymore. This dhoti was given to me by Pandit ji, who was there to do a Kundli pooja because that's what my parents thought could help. A dhoti - I believe is gender non binary clothing famous all across India in various names. To my surprise I was very excited to experiment with the dhoti, to make dresses and silhouettes with it on my body. I locked the doors and picked my sister's old heels because I couldn't spoil the new ones. I desperately tried to fit my foot in. Realising, it would never fit in perfectly I decided to embrace the imperfection.

The artwork has inspired from a short story of Shankhadeep Musafirana, where the main protagonist a teenage person identifying their inner womanhood confined with the body with growing features of the male hormones, eventually asking an idol maker to give them the shape of the goddess.

If we see the image minutely, we will find a transgender personality appeared as an idol which can be very much comparable to Goddess Durga. The circular background can be called ‘Chalchitro’ which we normally find beside any idol. Like Devi Durga, we see an animal as companion located in the graffiti. Her (His) dress also symbolizes “ARDHANARISWAR”, who possess both the features of male and female. As we look at the top, we see some curious boys and girls. They are the spectators. All the kids having same dress represents their same mindset. They are the new generation. Only they have the freshly germinated mind. They will establish these HUMANS with proper respect and honor, in the society. Acceptance from the core of the heart and not by any imposition.

"Abhisarika" represents a gay bonding, love of a man towards another man. A shadowed artwork with detailed henna work all over man's chest chants that there is no prefixed parameter of array.

Butterflies have layers of colours, so as 'they'. It's not white or black, masculine or feminine. Their soul flies beyond binaries.

To be a member of India's LGBTQ+ community is to be marginalised and persecuted. In the past, sexuality of any form has seldom been discussed openly here, meaning that non-traditional attitudes towards love and lust remain taboo. Only the bravest dare come out of the closet. To hear peoples' stories is to understand their struggles and vulnerabilities, and to realise that our desires may be different, but they are all equally valid and parallel. There is no "normal" life in which everyone can be happy. In this photographic series, as people celebrate and express their identities, I imagine a world in which everyone's lived reality reflects their feelings within.

This photograph was during in a Pride walk hosted by LGBT community people in Kolkata in 2019. It was a very colourful and joyful pride walk, which started from Mohammad Ali Park in Kolkata. All participant around the pride walk had colourful and vibrant attire and perfectly matched with the colours of rainbow pride. This Transwoman posed for photograph and gave some outstanding expressions. The expression matter in all kind of portrait shot and it reflects more when eye speaks a lot. The eye contact with the camera makes the portrait popped out form the attire scene as this delivered a strong and significant voice of their community.

I often come across these forms which asks me - “What is your GENDER?” As an adult, I have lots of questions – What made someone distinctly – male or female? The sexual organs are the obvious differences I figured out which have been assigned to us by birth or the names we are given by our parents? In our society when a child is born, these tags are assigned to the child by the people we live in. Girls are supposed to sit, talk in a different way than Boys. Boys are born to be free and rule, because that’s the majority. However, our naked, bare bodies undressed from frivolity, focused on function and iteration, imagining the countless possibilities which can be actualize. These days in modern Instagram world, what I came across is – there are seven unique gender terms which I was not even aware of – Male, Female, Intersex, Trans, Non confirming, Personal and Eunuch. A male is an individual who describes himself as one of the gender majority. Maleness derived from most of the conversations what I have heard around which growing up is – sperm production, male sexual organs, deep voice after puberty, muscles mass is more. As female features are softer, and her contours implied. when an individual with the conventional characteristics of a male do not perceives himself as male, this individual is understood as sis- male. The variations are Endlessly diverse. If asked, I would say – gender is a Personal choice, it’s a feeling how you see yourself not how you are seen through outside world, based on your characters or the clothes we wear. Someone’s existence in described how society or others see us – he is a man, she is a woman, no! She is not a man; he is not a woman. Neither or both, whereas, for me – body is just a body. Nothing else. Nowadays, I have grown a strong believe that gender doesn’t exists. These are just social constructs that are created by others, who do not understand or want to understand what I feel inside for myself. A Personal gendered individual is someone who identifies as Themselves. So, I engendered myself by my name – through which I am recognized. But again, it’s just a name and a Male Alphabet off course! Concern is – do we need these validations? I intend to continue drafting type that has the complexity and the versatility of the personal. Not an absence of gender, but an irrelevance that embraces the particular. Embraces function. Embraces idiosyncratic beauty. it is an act of liberation from the societal pressures that masculinity has placed on to them. It simply means that traditional standards of what is desirable, beautiful, functional, full of design libido, no longer apply and difficult to comprehend as a necessary component in social projects. Rather than serve a social purpose on the outset, this technology was created for its own end, a social purpose to be found later or never. its initial intent: simply to materialize a “beautiful” idea.

It all starts with the eye. How we look at people. We judge them and put them in different categories. Our eyes have penetrative force. They can hurt someone and can also heal them. We need to look within and then we will be able to look beyond and see everyone as a soul.