Mapping Cubbon Park Through a Scenic Exploration of James Bidgood’s ‘Pink Narcissus’

single-channel projection, curtain, vinyl on sunboard, table top, suede, vinyl sticker, cloth on wooden frame, mud, carpet
2025

Made in 1971 by James Bidgood, ‘Pink Narcissus’ is a non-linear narrative that follows a sex worker moving through fictional spaces - all built in the directors bedroom over a seven-year period. The story is one of desire, where the main lead moves through a set of dream sequences. I use seven of these backdrops, erasing the central figure that becomes a ghost like figure moving through these spaces. The video is set within another set with props borrowed from Cubbon park, a once famous cruising park in Bangalore.

can i see u?

4-channel video installation with sound
2022

Using cut-out images sourced from queer dating apps, ‘can i see u?’ aims to restructure a relation between spaces, objects and time. The audio narration allows us to reconstruct a record of desire moving through non-linear space and time. Cut-out images from dating apps subtract the central figure and bring to focus the background instead. Subtracting the central figure in these photographs allows us to focus on objects in the background, and the interior spaces they sit in, both of which then become the central focus of these images. The audio narration moves between contemporary time and space, interspersed with accounts that became public through the Wolfenden Committee Report of 1957. The report came together after the Montagu Trial involving the arrest of Lord Montagu, Peter Wildeblood and Michael Pitt Rivers on grounds of ‘indecent behaviour’ at Montagu’s beach hut. This committee was a principal document in the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom in 1967 and became an important reference in the 2009 Suresh Kumar Koushal v. NAZ Foundation case taking place in the Delhi High Court that led to the decriminalization of homosexuality, in Delhi in 2009. The four-channel video is spread out through a large, black space - images flashing in tandem with audio.

Uske Baad Woh Jhadiyon Mein Leke Gaya

inkjet prints on archival paper
2018 - 21

Public sites where men engage in sexual encounters with other men become the backdrop of this work. Images taken from these spaces are fictionalised and used as backdrops for objects foraged from these sites. The images help create an afterlife for these objects. Disconnected from spaces they were found in, they take on new fictional meanings filled with possibilities incomplete in the present they originate from. The objects work as anti-evidence of places and times they came from. In their new form, as fictionalized versions of their original selves, they work like ephemera, trace, remains, things that are left behind, hanging in the air like a rumor, remains from a fictional place that might not exist. Inspired by the idea of the still-life, the images aim to redeem these seemingly trivial objects and give them new life filled with possibilities for a new, imagined world. This ephemeral arrangement of objects and memories from spaces like parks, public toilets and gardens map out a mise-en-scene of what could have been. They also work as potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility.

Kab Se Ho Iss Line Mein?

soft-bound artist book, 69 pages
19.812 X 12.954 cm/7.8 X 5.1 inches
2018

The book contains transcripts of conversations had in cruising spaces across different parts of Delhi. They map out the city via economies of desire that are dotted by class, caste, masculinities and systems of power.

Suresh Kumar Koushal v. NAZ Foundation (India) Trust (Civil Appeal No. 10972 of 2013)

hard-bound artist book, 98 pages
9 x 6 inches (22.86 x 15.24 cm)
2017

In 2013, an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court resulting in the over-ruling of the Delhi High Court judgement of 2009 that read down Section 377 (that criminalised same-sex acts). The judgement of the Supreme Court re-criminalised homosexual acts as being ‘against the order of nature’. The book is a reprint of the judgement with the entire document blackened out except for negations.

Planet Romeo Drawings

2012 - 16

sandip kuriakose