Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Conversations and Connections!

Fridays at Nigah are back, and this month let's meet up again, get to know each other, and later, hear Winston Wilde, an amazing queer activist from the US, talking about his life and multiple ways of living queerly. He's been an activist for 29 years: in 1973, at age 16 he helped to establish the Los Angeles Gay Community Center (now the LA Gay & Lesbian Center), and later, to organize the One Institute, the largest gay and lesbian archives in the world. Now, with a PhD in human sexuality, a book to his name and a psychotherapy practice for erotic minority clients, he's the perfect person to talk about the possibilities queerness opens up. Also, he's looking for a boyfriend! :) So come, join us on 

Friday, Dec 9 | 5 to 8.30 pm | Winston's talk at 7 pm
Milan Centre | A-20 Basement, Lajpat Nagar III


Friday, November 4, 2011

NIGAH QUEERFEST 2011


Here are the links to the films, workshops, art and performances for this year's Nigah QueerFest.
Hope to see you all there!



Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Thursday, March 3, 2011

कुईर अड्डा - आपका अपना रंगमंच | Queer Cafe: An Open Mic Evening




पिछले पांच सालों से कायम, फिर से वही शाम - कुईर अड्डा - जिसमे हम हर उस आवाज़ को आमंत्रित करते हैं, जो की हमारे जेंडर और यौनिकता की कल्पनाओं को झकझोड़ के रख दे | हमें चुनौती दे, हमारी गुमां बदल दे |

आमंत्रित हैं: कवितायेँ, अभिनय, कहानियां, गीत-गाने, विडियो, फिल्म, नाटकबाजी, ग़ज़ल, शोखी, बड़बड़, शोक, व्यंग्य, कामुक बातें, नज़्म, जो आप चाहें | आपके दर्शकों का आपका ही इंतiज़ार है |

सभी आयें और हिस्सा लें | हर एक भाषा आमंत्रित है | हर एक के लिए टाइम स्लोट: 10 मिनिट | भाग लेने के लिए ईमेल करें: contact@nigah.org या फिर फ़ोन करें: 9650374329 | यही, अगर कोई भी प्रशन हो |

कब: 19 मार्च शनिवार | शाम 7 बजे.

कहाँ: दे अट्टिक, रिगल बिल्डिंग, सी. पि.
पीपल ट्री के ऊपर
मेट्रो: राजीव चौक
फोन: 23746050, 51503436

विडियो लेना या फोटो खेंचना मना है |


Queer Cafe: An Open Mic Evening

In our sixth year, we bring another evening of voices that challenge the ways in which we imagine our sexualities, genders and desires!

Inviting readings, performances, poetry, songs, videos, films, mime, erotica, rants, raves, elegies, odes, limericks, nazms... Your audience is waiting.

Open to all. Entries invited in any language. Time slot per reader/performer: 10 mins. To sign up to read/perform, email contact@nigah.org or call 9650374329. Ditto if you have questions.

When: Saturday, 19th March 2011 @ 7 pm

Where: The Attic, Regal Building, CP
Above People Tree
Nearest Metro: Rajiv Chowk
Phone: 23746050, 51503436

No video or photography will be permitted.

Monday, February 21, 2011

QueerFest 2010: Art Review

From Art Slant
-- Manjari Kaul

No lesbos this, our sea-girt isle,
and Sappho does not sing
her songs of love with silven tongue
yet nonetheless they still are sung
by voices new, in tropic clime.

-Inez Vere Dullas, Mitylene in Bombay



The 2010 Nigah queer fest in Delhi marked the passing of a year since the reading down of the draconian Section 377 by the Delhi High court. The art work exhibited at Siddhartha Hall at Max Mueller Bhavan, curated by Sunil Gupta, raised the question of what a post-377 world meant to us; What is the implication of declaiming that we are free today? What does sexual freedom mean in our current location and time? Does asserting one's queer identity liberate us, affect change or even cause a little dent or nudge to a heteronormative social order? The art works displayed were eclectic in the varied ways they were celebratory, questioning gender and sexuality as they touch our everyday lives, disrupt tradition, fracture some of our naive assumptions and cherished notions. The result was a harmonious cacophony of cartoons, pen sketches, photography and drawings expressing ideas on sex, sexuality and freedom.

In “An Ideal Boy,” Meera Sethi reproduces the chart of good habits. In the format of a straight-jacketed, normative and instructional code to good behaviour, Sethi inserts a subversive twist. ‘An ideal boy’ is show in various scenarios under the headings of 'kind and generous', 'makes himself clean', 'meditates daily', 'cares for family and friends' and 'takes part in social activity' which shows the 'ideal boy' at a bar with another man clinking glasses.' Perhaps most unique are the two images: ‘Uses protection' and 'finds good lover,’ which each represent the boy in a homosexual relationship. The artist performs a threefold task of mocking the normative order of what is considered good morals in Indian society, creating an alternate to a heterosexual idea of romance and sexuality and lastly, imparting the message of safe sex.

Cuban-American photographer, Silvia Ros's “Freedom to Love” features a lesbian couple with children as an aspirational reality superimposed on history. Ros articulates the political battle of queer rights against a legal system that does not validate a marriage to her partner or allow her to adopt a child. The artist uses a photo from the family album of her grandparents in a park with their children and superimposes her grandfather’s face with her grandmother's, quoting her family history of fleeing from Spain to Cuba to the United States in search for democracy and freedom. Ros anchors her family's quest for freedom in her own circumstances, as the state of Florida prohibits same sex marriage, denying her freedom and choice.

From the series, “Nine Acts of Reciprocity,” Qasim Riza Shaheen performs a tawaif in a work of photo performance. The bearded man in rich bright fabric with kohl rimmed eyes, luscious painted lips, wearing a gold necklace and a subtly seductive countenance against the background of a lattice window evokes the Indian courtesan tradition as well as subverts it. Here a man poses as the beguiler, as the object of desire as he meets the viewer’s gaze with charm, asserting his agency and strident sexuality as a gorgeous cross-dressing male.

“FAT.SO” calls itself “a production of a few fatwimmin who love their abundant and sumptuous selves.” It parodies lifestyle magazines targeted mostly at women who are instructed to aspire to a life of “size zero” without which they might as well be as good as dead. The cover photo done by Abhinandita Mathur and the concept by Neelima Aryan, has a figure of a voluptuous woman facing her back to the camera which lovingly captures the contours of her love handles. The magazine cover claims that saggy is sexy; “Eat play love” replaces crash diet regimes that are the most common itinerary in contemporary women's lifestyle magazines. Anita Dube's untitled doodles in pen of naked women engaged in sexual activity with each other and Vidisha Saini's “Unvoiced,” a photograph of one boy bending over to kiss another are representations of queer sexuality in the very act that was deemed criminal till the reading down of 377.

The invigorating quality of the exhibition was it's witty streak of parody and a very serious sense of humour. It makes forays into fantasy, the everyday, the political, the rebellious and the discomforting. We witness the multiple entrees through of the closet door, melting, emerging, converging, disrupting our normal course of travel. Sunil Gupta's curatorial exercise is praiseworthy in its sheer intrepidity, in it's vision of freedom in a land that may not be ancient Greece but where paeans are sung of queer desire and rights.


(All images courtesy of Nigah Queerfest 2010 and the arists.)