Dibin Thilakan’s ‘Love Street Blues’ imagines a world where love exists freely, without political or legal restrictions. 2018, Gouache and sumi ink on paper. Image © Sarmaya Arts Foundation
June is observed as Pride Month, a tradition that began in America but is now celebrated in many parts of India too. The purpose is to increase visibility and stand in solidarity with people from LGBTQIA+ communities. As an archive of Indian art and history, we at Sarmaya are looking for ways to make our collection more accessible and relevant to diverse audiences. Can a museum that isn’t explicitly queer in its collection or approach still find ways to speak to these communities? How exactly do we go about ‘queering the archive’?
Queering the archive is a concept that emerged in recent decades as part of broader efforts to fill in archival silences around historically marginalised voices. In a collection like Sarmaya’s, for example, such an effort brings up questions like: How does same-sex love or transgender identity show up in Indian history and mythology? Is an artist’s queerness relevant to our understanding of their art? How do we reconcile traditional indigenous expressions of love (for eg. two peacocks romancing in a Madhubani painting) with a contemporary understanding of those symbols?
This interview series is an attempt to answer some of these questions. We interviewed Dr Ruth Vanita, author, activist and academician specialising in gender and sexuality studies, and Mira Brunner, an archivist from QAMRA (Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism), one of the first dedicated LGBTQ+ archives in India. We hope these conversations serve as a starting point for archives across India—and South Asia more broadly—to reflect on both best practices and potential missteps.
Click on the images below to read our conversations with…
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- Dr Ruth Vanita
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- Mira Brunner
