Gender Bender 2019
Kahi-Suni is a socially engaged art project about marriage migration in India. It was initially created for the Gender Bender Festival 2019, organised by the Sandbox Collective and Geothe Insitut, Bangalore by artists Sneha Joshi and Ashmi Mridul. Marriage migration is largely a gendered migration, a common custom practiced by many women in India. Through the project, we interviewed and collected stories of six women across several socio-economic backgrounds about their experiences of migration and how it altered their sense of identity and belonging.
The stories were played through telephones, the most common object of connection in a migrant's life. They were installed in the space along with other archival objects that represented the stories of the women. All the objects were placed in an intimate space to invite introspection and conversation. The saree is an important object adorned by a woman on her wedding day. Each saree represented the story of a different woman, laid down as a carpet in a circular seating space. The project was an invitation to the audience to immerse themselves into the world of these women listen to stories and engage with objects.
Members of the audience added to the archive by sharing stories of their mothers, aunts and grandmothers who've experienced marriage migration.