July 27th — 9th August
A practical review is important to improve your existing knowledge and understand how people have approached the same topic in a different way. I focused on the projects which were displayed with the underlying focus of belief formation through performance/ participation.
Art projects
1.Traversing experiences — Shaunak Mahbubani
Shaunak Mahbubani and Neha Mehta have made a passageway for experiencing what women face on a daily basis. This passage is made out of a lot of metal hands, which would touch the person when they try to cross through.
Image credits - Shaunak Mahbubani (Traversing experiences)
What can I learn from them?
Building empathy and walking a mile(literally) in a women’s shoe, is a great example of bodystorming. This project makes men realize how it feels to be in that position and being afraid at every given point in time. A deeper understanding of patriarchy, as seen in action in urban public life was my personal takeaway from this project.
2. Photography projects on awareness of menstruation
What can I learn from them?
A very bold move to be showing menstrual blood on camera, I can learn that to break taboos, I will have to be a little controversial in my work, which would, in turn, be a conversation starter.
3. Gamification
I looked at a few case studies where design students have been trying to get rid of the cultural stigma of menstruation with the help of turning education into games.
One such case study by the Delft Institute of positive change was studied by me.
What can I learn from them?
This gamification shows me that I can think about breaking the taboo by indirect methods, such as gamification and humor. A sense of competition between young students can bring out speaking up openly about things.
Instead of only adopting the culture of India for the visual language, it can also be adopted into the game itself.
4. Protests/ Practical acts related to menstruation
I also looked at a few protests conducted over the past few years in relation to our changing times. The Sabarimala temple, in Kerala, has been noted down for not letting women of menstrual ages (10–50) to enter.
The Devaswom board chief said that “once a device is made which would detect a woman’s purity(aka menstruating), we will allow women to enter”. This statement received a lot of negative reactions and resulted in women forming a 600km long chain standing and pledging for gender equality. Additionally, thousands of men mirrored the Women’s Wall in a parallel line, also in support of gender equality.
I also looked at an art piece by Aniket Mitra, which showed a bloody lotus on a sanitary pad, which also raised a lot of controversy in India as it directly spoke about a goddess having periods.
Takeaways
I realized that very little work had been done in India related to menstruation. Most of the design outcomes related to blood had been hidden away. To stand out, it was critical to making a controversial design to start conversations.
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