Experiences of queerness are often about loneliness and longing for spaces of warmth and community. Being an artist who is used to staying in the shadows, I find myself longing for spaces of such queer friendships and expression often.

This photograph shows a scene from the exhibition ‘Queer Objects 1.0’ organized in Guwahati in late 2023. In a brightly lit exhibition venue, a young man can be seen seated on a folding wooden chair, deep in thought, and sketching something with a pencil in a sketchbook. He is seated with his back to a wall, and to his right can be seen a table displaying the zines created by the author of the accompanying article. Beyond the young man, in the backdrop, a few people can be seen viewing the exhibits hung on the walls or talking among themselves. The camera’s focus is on the young man, while blurring the objects in the background as well as the foreground, including the display table for the zines. Photo credit: Bhaskarjyoti Rabha

Photo credit: Bhaskarjyoti Rabha

Several queer artists and art enthusiasts in Guwahati managed to build such a space through their joint efforts in organizing a queer exhibition called ‘Queer Objects 1.0’ under the guidance of Rishav Thakur, who is a researcher and community organizer and was the curator of the exhibition. On the weekend of October 28, 2023, the Gauhati Artists’ Guild at Chandmari, Guwahati saw a bustling crowd of local queer artists and ally-volunteers setting up space for a weeklong exhibition around the theme of capturing queer experiences. Objects of significance owned by queer people along with artwork, craft work, and all kinds of pieces of art which had been collected over months found themselves in this space, ready to be in conversation with an audience.

This is a close-up shot of the zine ‘Love is Love’ created by the author of the accompanying article. The wording ‘love is love’ is presented stylistically in multiple colours lavender, yellow, orange, red, and grey on a white background. Photo credit: MekuriikoI reached the venue early that morning to help set up the space and to complete arranging the five zines I had been making for this exhibition. The days leading up to it had acquainted me with a few fellow artists, all of whom soon joined in on the preparations. After we had finished putting up paintings, arranging different ‘queer objects’, and moving things around to unanimously agreed upon positions, I sat down to finish cutting and folding the zines. A few of them joined in to help me while the others started reading the finished final pieces.

This is a close-up shot of the zine ‘The Queer Manifesto’ created by the author of the accompanying article. The name of the zine is presented simply in bold capital letters in three vertical lines towards the right side of the image. The lettering is in white and yellow, and the background is a deep magenta. Photo credit: MekuriikoI sat buried in my cutting-folding work and nervously watched them flip through the zines. What a strange feeling it was to have your art speak on behalf of you when you struggle to do the talking!

This is a close-up shot of the zine ‘Queer Objects’ created by the author of the accompanying article. The zine cover shows a black and white graphic of an ornate mirror, with the name of the zine written in lavender in handwriting style on the mirror, and the right side of someone’s face partially reflected in the mirror. The entire graphic is placed on a white background. Photo credit: MekuriikoWhile making the zines, the thought crossed my mind often that people are going to read and know me through my work. It kept me moving back and forth, encouraging me to make my art revealing and vulnerable at times, but then also detached and generic at other times. I suppose my zines reflected this apprehension. The Love is Love zine was a collection of drawings of queer couples; The Queer Manifesto was a collaborative zine that included a few queer ideas and slogans and invited the audience / exhibition visitors to add their own; the third zine was an illustrated version of the story behind one of the ‘queer objects’ of significance submitted by another queer person – a piece of clothing that was a part of their gender identity exploration.

This is a close-up shot of the zine ‘You Will Die, And So Will I’ created by the author of the accompanying article. The name of the zine is presented in large bold text, all capitals, in black, on a stylistic background of pink and blue. Photo credit: MekuriikoThe two other zines were more personal. One was titled You Will Die, And So Will I, which was simply a rant I once went on, because I was frustrated by how cruel and intolerant people could be when life was too short to do anything besides spending it loving and caring for each other. It was a rant that came out of the incredulity that people do not respect the brevity of their existence and waste it on hurt and hate.

This is a close-up shot of the zine ‘Queer Revelations’ created by the author of the accompanying article. The name of the zine is presented in large bold pink lettering, all capitals, inside a white cloud-like shape. Right below the cloud is the graphic of an old-style analogue television set, with the smiling image of popular singer Falguni Pathak on the screen holding a mic and singing. Watching Falguni intently is a little girl, presumably the author herself. We can only see the back of the head of the girl, her hair tied in two little ponytails. Photo credit: MekuriikoThe final zine was an illustration of a personal story of my queer awakening in Guwahati of the 2000s, through the music video of Falguni Pathak’s song Meri Chunar Udd Udd Jaye. The zine illustrated my childhood fascination of Pathak’s choice of clothing and self-presentation and my intense crush on the beautiful Ayesha Takia, and analyzed the subtle queer signaling shown in the music video’s story of the friendship between the two.

This photograph is a close-up shot of a square-shaped artwork created by the author to depict her experience of lucid dreaming. On a deep green background is an image made of different shades of red, mirrored four times in a kaleidoscopic design. The main mirrored image is of a sleeping figure juxtaposed over a figure that is awake. The eyes of the awake figure seem to bleed into and connect to a large head-like structure facing it. The head is interspersed with multiple wide-eyes that seem to be looking back at the sleeping / awake figures. The artwork seems to convey a brooding sense of fear, and an unsettling sense of being observed. Photo credit: Bhaskarjyoti Rabha

Photo credit: Bhaskarjyoti Rabha

Apart from the zines, I also submitted another artwork which was a representation of a time when I was going through intense episodes of lucid dreaming [see adjacent photograph]. There is not much information about lucid dreaming online, and I struggled with the experience of it, where I would find myself awake within a dream but unable to escape it. While many talk of lucid dreaming as a way of knowing your own unconscious better by interacting more actively with your dreams and have pleasant experiences, I found it terrifying to find myself awake within the imageries and scenarios my unconscious concocted, most of which consisted of dark and disturbed entities.

The entire experience also reflected my deep fears of knowing and exploring my own repressed selves and my struggles with internalized invalidation of my own queerness. I took the lucid dreaming experience as my unconscious repressed selves chiding me for my cowardly refusal of their truth.

The exhibition was thus an important way for me to think deeply about my own feelings and stories through the art I was making. It was also the first time my art was on display with the description under my artist-name revealing myself as ‘a queer artist’. I used this as an opportunity to indirectly come out to a family member who I took along to the exhibition.

In the brief time I spent engaging with the exhibition, I had a taste of what it would be like to live outside of my own shadows, and I am truly grateful for that.

Inset: Note from the exhibition curator Rishav Thakur: ‘Queer Objects 1.0’ involved more than 34 transqueer and allied artists, activists, and thinkers from Assam. It was held at the Gauhati Artists’ Guild in Guwahati. The exhibition involved a display of objects offered by transqueer folks along with an anecdote each about how the objects encapsulated a slice of their queer journeys. These were mundane things of everyday use like a kerahi or wok offered by a gay man who married in the 1990s. Then there were the make-shift binders that trans masculine people used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition involved artworks and performances devised in conversation with this material archive. The artworks disidentified with or short-circuited the usual modes in which transqueerness finds representation in the media along with the (often unnamed) intersections of caste, tribe, religion, and region. Despite the ephemerality of the exhibition, which lasted for a week in October-November 2023, this work brought together a set of people as the Queer Objects Collective, who continue organizing community events in Assam. About the article series: In this series, artists involved with the exhibition reflect on their art practice. Such reflections show how art – collaboratively made – is as much a curation of community as it is a composition of materials, style, and imagery. These writings also exemplify how bodily processes of art-making can become a dense zone from where thought emerges. As we prepare to raise funds for ‘Queer Objects 2.0’ in 2026, which will be centered on the theme of violence and queer ecology in Northeast India, we are happy to offer this series of articles for the readers of 'Varta'.

About the main photo: A collective display of the five zines made by the author for the exhibition ‘Queer Objects 1.0’. Individual photographs of the zines and other artworks are interspersed through the article. Photo credits: Mekuriiko (unless mentioned otherwise)

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