Aesthetics of daily life

When the camera slips from the grip of casteist and colonial gatekeepers, it finds new ways to see. It lingers on daily life, catches the blush of celebrations, the weight of grief, the shape of land and longing.

- DIYA MARIA GEORGE

This Dalit History Month, as part of the Vaanam Art Festival by the Neelam Cultural Centre, Niththam (Everydayness) showcases precisely this shift. Here, photographs hum, installations snarl, and poems whisper what mainstream archives have tried to bury.

Let the image breathe

Jaisingh Nageswaran, photographer and a first-time curator with the restless energy of someone who's spent years dismantling casteist lenses, describes the exhibition as "a visual poetry". "Photography isn't just about taking pictures. It's about how you display them," he says. Images here are unruly: a boy's laughter showcased across a vast white slab, a film flickering quietly in a corner. The room invites you to pause, lean in, and unlearn the aesthetics imposed upon us.

Now, with smartphones and digital access, photography is no longer the preserve of the elite. But once, photography was an outsider's gaze. "My grandparents weren't allowed into a photo studio when they got married," he recalls. "They had to go all the way to Palani to take a picture."

So, Niththam asks: if everyone can be a photographer now, what does it mean when twelve artistes focusing on stories from the margins, tell their tales on their terms?

Rethinking beauty