NAIR
Ruination
Performance
Duration: 4 min 30 sec
Materials: Chair, video, sound
Documentation: Nikshith Shetty
Bangalore, IND (2019)
This poem/performance reflects the relationship between society and menstruation. The blood here too makes a double meaning for blood as a perception of “ruination/unclean/impurity”. In the traditional Indian culture, menstrual blood is regarded as impure and women aren’t allowed to enter places of worship or their very own kitchen. The piece is an audio-visual journey of this phenomena where the woman is expected to stay away and isolated from these spaces, almost like how the rubble/stones/dirt is removed and thrown away or isolated in this context. It represents the rubble of the past ticking against time, as the woman remains confined to these perceptions. The poem is a form of undoing as it reinstates her position and value, which is oppositional to the norm.
