Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

 Gigi Scaria is an acclaimed Indian artist whose multidisciplinary practice has spanned a diverse range of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video art over the past two decades. While his early career began with representational painting, Scaria quickly gravitated towards an experimental approach that allowed him to transcend the boundaries of individual artistic disciplines. At the core of Scaria's artistic explorations are profound inquiries into the phenomena of urbanisation, migration, displacement and more recently, the environmental crisis. Drawing inspiration from his own experiences of moving from a small village in Kerala to the bustling metropolis of Delhi, Scaria's works interrogate the intended and unintended consequences of rapid urban development. His oeuvre provides searing artistic commentary on the alienation, chaos and rigid social hierarchies that arise from unchecked expansion of Indian cities driven by policies prioritisin...

In the male-gazed world of Indian cinema, female desire has long been a radical disruption -  acknowledged yet swiftly punished, fetishized yet contained. Konkona Sen Sharma's “The Mirror '' from the Lust Stories 2 anthology subverts this trope, unflinchingly holding up a mirror to the complexities of female sexuality. Through masterful visuals and searing performances by Amruta Subhash and Tillotama Shome, the short film demands that we not just glance but stare - at the raw yearning, the unabashed kink, the unapologetic claiming of pleasure. Right from the opening frames, "The Mirror" establishes the centrality of the female gaze. The first erotic encounter is staged not as a salacious reveal but an awkward stumbling - one woman catching another in a profound moment of intimacy neither are able to articulate. One woman keeping a secret the other doesn’t know. The fact that Ishita continues to watch Seema and her husband without their knowledge after catching the...