Un/Wrapped, A community art project, video: 7 min 5 sec
Un/Wrapped was an interactive art project invited by ‘Alochana’- the NGO works for Woman's research and documentation in Pune India. Alochana organizes two days workshops in the villages around Pune which conducts sessions, which encompasses women’s rights awareness, patriarchy and legalities, health and hygiene, child care and so on.
My core idea of this interactive art project was to initiate discourse and personalize the dialogue on the situation of women in rural India, through the interpretations of the visual. I created a 2.4 x 4-meter long digital flex print and displayed it during the workshop. Considering face as a symbol sensitivity, as it has all sensory organs, I wrapped my face with layers of plastic and documented a number of stages in the wrapping process. Each face is composed within the arch of traditional regional (Wada) architecture. As the face gets wrapped frame by frame, the background grows darker red.
34 women from neighboring villages participated in the workshop. Attending different sessions throughout the day, they observed the visual on display. At the end of the first day, we all were grouped and discussed everyone’s interpretations and then a couple of women from each group voiced their group discussions.
The discussions and interpretations opened up as first-person narratives, secondary experiences or imaginary situations. The discomfort of sharing personal space was replaced by the act of interpreting the visual. Most of them saw it as a metaphor to the women’s condition. And to my surprise, the sequence of reading the visual, from wrapped to unwrapped or vice versa, surfaced several stories.
This interactive project experimented with the strength of visual interpretations of how the visual can change its dynamics according to the space of display; and how the depersonalization of a discussion through visual surfaces personal stories.
My core idea of this interactive art project was to initiate discourse and personalize the dialogue on the situation of women in rural India, through the interpretations of the visual. I created a 2.4 x 4-meter long digital flex print and displayed it during the workshop. Considering face as a symbol sensitivity, as it has all sensory organs, I wrapped my face with layers of plastic and documented a number of stages in the wrapping process. Each face is composed within the arch of traditional regional (Wada) architecture. As the face gets wrapped frame by frame, the background grows darker red.
34 women from neighboring villages participated in the workshop. Attending different sessions throughout the day, they observed the visual on display. At the end of the first day, we all were grouped and discussed everyone’s interpretations and then a couple of women from each group voiced their group discussions.
The discussions and interpretations opened up as first-person narratives, secondary experiences or imaginary situations. The discomfort of sharing personal space was replaced by the act of interpreting the visual. Most of them saw it as a metaphor to the women’s condition. And to my surprise, the sequence of reading the visual, from wrapped to unwrapped or vice versa, surfaced several stories.
This interactive project experimented with the strength of visual interpretations of how the visual can change its dynamics according to the space of display; and how the depersonalization of a discussion through visual surfaces personal stories.