Memorializing Acts Against Gender Violence in South Asia  through Visual Portraits

Isha Yadav

Isha Yadav Ambedkar University Delhi

Abstract

In this essay, as a visual art practitioner and scholar of gender violence in India, I discuss three visual portraits of South Asian women as records of activism against institutionalized gender violence in South Asian cultures. These artists use their diverse artistic styles to memorialize intersectional violence in three categories of violence namely, caste violence, tribal violence, and dowry violence. They not only use the digital platform to mobilize solidarity against these forms of oppression but also transform conventional exhibition spaces and art-viewing into movement-building exercises against gender violence. Through their art, these artists (Priyanka Paul, Portia Roy, and Kruttika Susarala) aim to build a dialogue on gender violence, caste oppression, and oppression against Indigenous people, and build solidarity among all women across borders and nationalities.

Author Biography

Isha Yadav, Ambedkar University Delhi

Isha Yadav is currently a doctoral student at Ambedkar University, Delhi. She has taught English and Communication Theory to undergraduates at University of Delhi and has worked as a Social Media Advisor to Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India and UN Women. She has earned a Master of Philosophy from Ambedkar University and earned a Master’s in English Studies from the University of Exeter, U.K. Isha is a published writer, a visual-art practitioner, and a feminist activist. She introduced Delhi art in the slam culture around the world, through Delhi Art Slam, a community she initiated for artists and to advocate art in public places. She has co-authored three books. Isha is also a street artist, has painted several walls across the capital, taken creative-writing workshops, and works in collaboration with several gender-sensitizing communities in Delhi. In 2022, she created a Museum of Rape Threats and Sexism, a visual-art installation that speaks about digital lives of women, for which she was the inaugural recipient of the Linda Stein Upstander Award for her art project memorializing sexual violence in 2021, which is in-process for becoming a documentary film. She has been a speaker at colleges, community events, radio channels, and the topic of newspaper articles and e-publications. Isha actively works on building support communities for women, for art for social change through her various art projects on mental health, arranged-marriages, gender-based conflicts, among other topics, and builds transnational dialogue.

Contact: iyadav19@stu.aud.ac.in