The Full Monty

Photographer Sunil Gupta and queer activist/writer Gautam Bhan have been curating the visual art element in Nigah for the past two years. Bhan says the work submitted this year is significantly different. “Previously,we exhibited mostly self-portraits. It’s established now that queer people exist in the mainstream,so the theme has shifted to fantasy and includes line sketches and photographs,both radical and intimate,” says Bhan.

“Queer people,because of the intense repression most of them experience,construct elaborate fantasies as a survival strategy,” says Gupta,whose work is entrenched in queer activism,“We are also in that art historical moment when the concept overrides craft,hence we blur the boundaries between professional artists and untrained ones,” he adds.

Some of the sketches,like a wreath of thorns embedded in the cracks of the earth,hint at struggle,while the kitschy and playful works operate on queer notions of desire,and refer to popular imagery from within the communities themselves.

New international participants indicate that the festival has spilled out of the Capital. An international,inter-sex artist,Ins Kroominga,plans onsite installations with text and images on the first day of festival while art theoretician and activist,Shivaji Panikkar,presents the queer archive,a project for documentation of queer art and literature. The blog,students-me-and-art-history.socialgo.com,is an avatar of what Panikkar plans to do in hard copy. “Professional art by queer artists functions as a catalyst in the formation of queer identity,” says Panikkar who thinks such art merits discussion.

The film package includes a selection of Indian and international films to focus on issues that are otherwise coded in heavy subtexts. The films focus on family relationships,body issues and queer collectives,to name a few. There are 24 films from India ,Bangladesh,Malaysia,Iceland,Italy,Germany,Denmark,Sweden ,Canada ,UK and the US.

The festival is on from October 23 to November 1