Conceptual nominee

Abstract:


My final year's graduation project, “I am disLecsiC” is a visual representation of constructed memories from my school days. As a student with learning differences, I had to navigate hurdles in my academic journey. My mind and eyes used to and still play tricks while reading and writing. My visual approach attempts to recreate my experience...the illusions and emotions.
The ‘hallucinated alphabets’ and ‘phantom numbers’ - one of my core experiences of Dyslexia - I have tried to reconstruct through visual illusions. The series’ colour scheme, dominated by two colours, comes from the heavily marked school notebooks. It is this memory of the fear of the two colours.


Artist Statement:


“Hallucinated alphabets....phantom numbers…. Is it me, or are they real? Reconstructing the past from scarred memories of my childhood highlights my version of dyslexia. The illusions and games my mind used to play - I thought my eyes were playing tricks with me. Why were my notebooks full of red and blue? Why was I looked down upon during my early school days? Why did my confidence have to be deeply impacted? The ghosts have never gone. I am still looking for answers.”

I was born and raised in Delhi. India was my first teacher to the use of light and colour in my visual learning.
My parents got me interested in photography and filmmaking from an early age. My mother is a television producer, and my father is a documentary filmmaker. Later, upon the diagnosis of my condition of learning differences, photography emerged as a powerful platform of expression. I am a Fashion Photography graduate of the University for the Creative Arts, United Kingdom.
My course helped me evolve and make choices in my approach to photography. Realistic and threaded with subtext, I like to play with the details of the mundane in the everyday to blur the line between reality and fantasy. I blend my visual approach with constructed narratives that reflect the world around me and investigate trends, social issues, and stereotypes.

My recent project, ‘I am disLecsiC’, was one of the finalists at the 39th Association of Photographers student awards, which were exhibited in London. The project was also published in the July edition of Amateur Photographer Magazine.