Nirvan
Nirvan explores body, identity and transformation through the hijra community in India.
The project takes its name from nirvan, a ritual of emasculation understood within the community as a passage towards rebirth and spiritual transformation. From this threshold, the work approaches the body as a space where gender, ritual, belief and social identity intersect.
Moving between everyday life and intimate spaces, the photographs look beyond fixed notions of identity to explore the ways bodies are inhabited, transformed and given meaning.
Rather than attempting to define the hijra community, Nirvan emerges from proximity and encounter, using photography as a way of approaching other forms of being, belonging and becoming.
2017 - 2019 / India
“There once was a king who asked a hijra to show him her power. The hijra clapped her hands three times and immediately the door of the king’s palace opened automatically, without anyone touching it.
Then the king said, “show me your power in some other way”. By the side of the road there was a thorny cactus. The hijra justtook the thorn of the cactus and emasculated himself. The hijra just stood there with the blood oozing out and raised his hand with his penis in it. Then the king realized the power of the hijras”.
Kamladevi, in Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India
