Confronting colourism and casteism
Protests in paintings
Besides 'Dark or Divine', is a mixed-media work made of jute (koni pai cloth), yarn thread, and a body print. In this piece, Yazhini connects two protests that happened a century apart in different parts of the world.
One is the Thol Seelai Porattam, the so-called 'breast tax' protest. In 19th-century Travancore, Nangeli, a lowered-caste Ezhava woman, cut off her breasts in protest against a tax that forced women like her to pay for the right to cover their chests. The other is a series of Western feminist protests: the 1968 'Burn the Bra' demonstration, 2007's 'Go Topless Day', and the 2012 'Free the Nipple' campaign.
Lived experiences
'People often view feminism through a very narrow lens and say one is true feminism and the other is pseudo feminism,' she explains. 'The Thol Seelai Porattam was a protest for the right to wear upper garments by women from marginalised communities, while the Free the Nipple and Burn the Bra movements are often misunderstood as the right to not wear upper garments. Both are about bodily autonomy.'
Born and raised in Chennai, Yazhini began her art journey in higher secondary school. She explored photography, dance, and theatre, but later chose visual art. After completing a BFA at the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai, she finished her Master's in Visual Art at Ambedkar University, Delhi, in 2024. Her work is shaped by her lived experience as a dark-skinned Bahujan woman in India. 'I've always received criticism about my body — like other women — not being represented or being misrepresented in mainstream media. These things led me to create politically. Everything I produce comes from or is related to my skin and body,' she says. On her goals for Dark or Divine, she shares, 'A seventh-grade girl once asked me about it after seeing my interview, and that made me feel that my goal was working. Conversations like these need to happen in various spaces.'
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