No +ve

Is a visual capture through photographs and video of embodied refusal. Conceptualized and captured by Sugat Gaikwad, an Art Photographer, and performed by Karishma Harlalka, a Dancer, Therapeutic Movement Practitioner and Psychologist, this exhibit forwards an understanding of consent and its implications.

No +ve contributes towards the important conversation about struggling with boundaries and looking at the outcome as positive, needed and necessary.

Drawing the implication of refusal onto the body, Karishma represents the visceral journey of saying no. Through the mechanics of fine art photography, Sugat captures the bodied, the disembodied and the unbodied in his images; and the desperate frenzy towards liberation through his video.

Together, this visual exhibit presents a personal interpretation of uttering a NO.

About the Dance Film: The frenzy, the itch, the disturbance. Visceral, physiological reactions, only felt because the No bursts inside me, in waves, in spurts, as tremors, shaking, uncontrollable. What should have been expressed stays inside, burning and eating away at me like acid. Try as I might it is impossible to get rid of. Why can’t I say that No. Why is it so difficult to say that No. What is that mysterious power that prevents me from saying that simple two-letter word.

It keeps playing over and over again in my mind, in my body, like a litany, that wants to be recognized, that wants expression, that wants my breath to flow in the right direction. Out of the mind, the body, the mouth. There. It’s there, just within my grasp. Ugh, missed again!

And the whole thing repeats on a loop.

A lot of the times, many of us are not able to say No. Such a simple word, that simply states something we don’t want, reject or cannot do. That we know will take from us in a way that will deplete us. It is just a boundary for establishing self-care. Isn’t it? So simple. Not.

A lot of us have grown up in homes, or in ways where boundaries weren’t even a concept and largely non-existent, till we realized otherwise. Living with a sense of unease that becomes so much an automatic part of us, that the first No feels like an unhealthy, alien and corrosive thing. The act of saying no can create a such a strong pull in the psyche, between doing what we want and doing what the outside wants us to do. The struggle, the discomfort, the pain of being torn into two is enough to create that anxiety, that split within the psyche, between who we are and who we want to be, between who we want to be and who we ought to be.

And this can go on and on, till either we break or we make. Neither process is easy and neither is the clear choice. We keep co-existing with the entirety of it. Maybe we will learn, maybe we will not. Maybe we will make peace with it, maybe we will not. Maybe we will succumb to it and maybe we might leave the entire loop altogether. Maybe it is a choice, maybe it’s not in our hands.

What does this struggle mean in the true felt sense? What happens when all these thoughts go in in the mind, in the body?

We invite you to join us in this journey of exploring and embodying boundaries.