Studio Co-ordinators:- Mario da Penha
Aastha Deshpande
This course was structured around the history of cities, focusing on gender in the context of South Asia. We started with learning how to view history through the lens of a historian.
We began at the dawn of civilisation and the formation of cities, and we discussed the artefacts and pieces of evidence of the past existence of multiple genders. We progressed through history and learned about genders and their roles by reading a variety of texts and articles such as Therigatha, Arthasharstra, Kamasutra, Mallanaga Vatsyaynna and contemporary writers such as Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita.
Throughout the course, we visited The Kaliamman temple in Scion, the Kanheri caves and the Vasai fort. The Kaliamman temple is where primarily the Hijra community takes care of and performs rites of the deity. We see how spaces were segregated for the nuns and the priests/monks in the Vasai court. In general, we learned to discern how the spaces were built and inhabited based on gender in different times, empires and religions in the Indian subcontinent.
We then took to understanding the gender disparity that the Queer community and women face in the contemporary dynamics of a city.
Equipped with an understanding of how cities, and changing cultures across the landscape of India structured society with respect to gender, caste, religion and sexuality we were asked to create a fictional narrative based on the accurate social structure of the period it took place in.
Many of us created comics, drawings, abstract art, acts and games.
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