Synopsis

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Bereft is a mixed-multimedia art project that tries to locate itself within continuums and liminalities of what it means to lead a queer, multiply disabled life. It does so by questioning the expanse of the body- through objects of everyday negotiation, depicting feelings and emotions that lodge both a sense of resistance-endurance as well as that of angst and collective pain. 

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Artist's statement

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Created using an autoethnographic approach towards the intersection of gender and disability, Bereft is a mixed-multimedia art project that tries to locate itself within continuums and liminalities of what it means to lead a queer, multiply disabled life. It does so by questioning the expanse of the body- through objects of everyday negotiation, depicting feelings and emotions that lodge both a sense of resistance-endurance as well as that of angst and collective pain. 

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For the one engaging, it aims to deliver a visual-tactile-somatic experience through five different artworks, each representing a separate but still very connected set of themes ranging from resistance as embodiment, as reclamation of space- physical, digital and cultural as well as the unique manifestation of identity diffusion, ‘shame’, body dysmorphia and dysphoric experiences with gender, invisibility within the disability discourse, neurodiversity, incapacities, lack and loss of agency amongst many other socially and medically deprived experiences.  

 

Though not to be confused as just a helpless attempt at bringing visibility to an otherwise alternate experience of everyday life, it does question our meaning-making of ‘existing’ in a society that stresses upon an exploitative sense of perfection – whether talking of abled bodies, or of completion, of achievement, of independence or of even the perfectly disabled or the perfectly queer person – all of which are just frameworks or lenses the project tries to diverge from. 

 

Whether the engager takes with them a new approach to looking at the dynamicity of disability or that of queerness, of binaries and the binary thinking model, of observing objects as extensions, limitations and non-limitations of the body or simply as some bodies being homes: homes at war with themselves, the idea is to use a non-binary discursive approach to art and provoke an initiation to conversation, and at least a trace of honest inclusion. 

 

As the artist, I acknowledge the privileges I hold - of being upper caste, upperclass and of coming from a Hindu background. During the project, I had access to an individual space, high speed internet connectivity and access to a prime delivery location, which made procuring of art supplies and certain electronic equipment that helped me make and record the process of the five artworks much easier. 

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About the artist

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Natasha (They/She) are a self-taught mixed/multimedia art practitioner whose work ranges from utilitarian, handcrafted art to art positioned at the juncture of gender, disability and design justice. They identify as genderfluid and are a person with multiple physical and psychosocial disabilities, and that informs their work in various ways. Having had a formal education in graphic as well as social design, their critique of the discipline with regards to ableism and inaccessibility is a strong ethic they aim to carry in future works they may create.