Eros And Its Discontents: Documenting LGBTQIA+ Lives In Modern India

‘Eros And Its Discontents’ by Supranav Dash documents the visuality of individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community living in India. This series of staged performative portraits shows individuals who do not wish to put themselves in boxes, and thus their stories spill out of the frames and enter our imaginations. The people in the images are treading a psychological minefield. Their lives are tapestries of hope struggling to stitch themselves together against the violent cuts of a conservative modern India that is quick to marginalise and discriminate.

It was not always so: our sacred traditions before ‘modernity’ tended to celebrate and explore gender fluidity, until colonialism used systemic violence to eradicate those voices. Now, as the world wakes up to all the colours of the identity spectrum, these unusual people are trying to build new iconographies out of bizarre objects and strange symbolisms, creating a new visual language of self-definition.

The entire series is shot within the confines of a 6’x 8’ corner of the artist’s studio. The subjects dramatise themes and motifs from their lives for the camera. The resultant images invite you to experience their stories. They draw you into the beautiful mess of their mental treasure houses, mixing the quotidian with the numinous to disclose what is hidden, and narrate what is untold. In the process they make you step over the line of safety to join them on their dangerous, wonderful journeys. When you return, you will come back changed.

Everywhere in the world today, tolerance and kindness are belittled and sneered at. India is no exception. The subjects of these portraits have had to struggle against the real and implied censure of their family and peers, the threats of reprisals by bosses and colleagues, the fear of frowns from strangers on the street. And still they show themselves freely, because a story told by one rainbow person to another is a lifeline. If you, too, have ever feared the anger of a mob, you will understand.

Talking with the subjects is important. So is hearing their stories, and allowing them to be heard. They tell of how hard it is to complete school, get a college education, or a good job, if you’re different. They have had to bear the pain of rejection by their dearest family and friends. Some of them must wear masks, until the mask itself is all you can see when you look at them. Then art is no longer truth, but a mere camouflage. In these portraits, the artist documents both the opening and closing of these truths, both the nakedness of skin and the paint and cloth that covers it.

‘Eros And Its Discontents’ is an account of how a handful number of people from India have transcended both the social masks that cover their flesh, and the flesh that masks their souls.

Photographs by Supranav Dash; Text by Rimi B Chatterjee