DISOBEDIENT OBJECTS
Graphic Design | Videoe | Print | Art Direction
In the early months of 2020, New Delhi saw huge riots break out on the streets between the Hindu-Muslim community because of an extremely unpopular new amendment to the constitution made by the government called the Citizen Amendment Act. This act grants Citizenship to asylum seekers of all communities except Muslims.
To witness the murder of 30 innocent muslims, the suppression of free speech and assembly and attacks on University students while the police stood as mute spectators complicit in those murders was a wake up call to me about what the future held for my country.
I studied works by scholars like Shashi Tharoor, Amartya Sen, Ashutosh Varshney, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot to name a few in an attempt to understand the growing Hindu nationalism in India and its effects on Indian national identity.
In the early months of 2020, New Delhi saw huge riots break out on the streets between the Hindu-Muslim community because of an extremely unpopular new amendment to the constitution made by the government called the Citizen Amendment Act. This act grants Citizenship to asylum seekers of all communities except Muslims.
To witness the murder of 30 innocent muslims, the suppression of free speech and assembly and attacks on University students while the police stood as mute spectators complicit in those murders was a wake up call to me about what the future held for my country.
I studied works by scholars like Shashi Tharoor, Amartya Sen, Ashutosh Varshney, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot to name a few in an attempt to understand the growing Hindu nationalism in India and its effects on Indian national identity.
The year 2019 was the year of dissent and three of the most explosive uprisings in different parts of the world, the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, Anti-CAA Protests in India and the Anti-Extradition Protests in Hong Kong.
The commonalities – all led by young people aged 20-30 on the front lines, each protested some kind of institutional or systemic form of discrimination and inequality and each saw brutal response from the government and the police. This is a documentation of the various objects that became synonymous with disobedience and how they changed the narrative by becoming symbols of taking back power.
