Gender Kala Aur Hum | 2023

workshops | gender. kala. aur hum 2023

Venue: Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics, Himachal Pradesh

Dates: 30 October - 2 November 2023

a workshop which explored and engaged with the idea of using art for the articulation of political visions and lived realities, as well as a means of generating dialogue and fostering social change, with a focus on gender and its diverse and complex intersections.

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A four day residential workshop in the glorious, mountainous environs of the Sambhaavnaa Institute in Kandbari, Himachal Pradesh, along with our 22 amazing participants. Teachers, artists, activists, researchers, trainers, cultural activists, college students and local residents who came together to create a warm, trusting space for interaction.

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Sessions with our star resource people - gender queer writer and activist, Shals Mahajan, who conducted a writing workshop and worked with the participants to unpack gender, the binary, its implicit and explicit hierarchies and their implications on everyday life and living; and artist-fellows, the Dhaarchidi Collective, whose installation Pahadaan da Laan provoked many interesting conversations about expressing regional experiences of gender through art.

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Four days of seeing art works, ranging from films and performance videos to interactive sites created under the reFrame fellowships and thinking about them led to important discussions on how gender intersects with caste, class, religion, ethnicity, work, leisure, dis/ability, biology, desire and much more. The final day was marked by the participants sharing their stellar creative prowess with the entire group, in the form of experimental films, a play, a theatrical reading, participatory theatre, a song and a photo exhibition, all conceptualised and created at the workshop.

Photo credits: the reFrame team and Kabir Maan