Almirah: When Pandora’s Box Opens (A Personal Exploration of Art Witnessed)
The curiosity that leads you to the well is not the same as that which makes you drink from the well. You may have arrived for the exploration, the beauty, the depth; but to imbibe, to devour, to forget and then to find — this decision is not made by you alone.
The well seduces, as does Avril.
Through betrayal of the safety a space like 1 Shanti Road offers and a Sunday night guarantees, you are jolted over and over into an unrequited tension that gives way only to more of itself. Yet you sit, with courage, to find a word-less exploration of what lives in our silence. That is what stands out the most about Almirah. The silence between spaces, between pieces, between every thak of the nail being pushed down on the wedding gown.
The four-parter show begins with a video piece called Mirage, which follows Avril through the fields of an urban mall in the traditional Rajasthani lehenga choli and matka. Straight out of the photo album of the Golden Triangle trip your grandmother took in the 80s and into your safe, away life next to the new Zara outlet. The juxtaposition that begs a thought also specifically has had the thought. It knows. You know. Avril and her privilege know.
The video is quickly followed by another — Untangle. Yet to say quick is a disservice to the aforementioned silence. The tiny studio room in Bengaluru is thick with the knowing. To the soundscape of sound-artist Paro, Avril appears — daringly — with her long curly hair. In time, a number of people untangle and iron her curly hair in repetitive motions. This is a protracted affair with little space for any confusion. An untanglement, straightening if you may, of a queer person with curly hair, lays bare. Your projection of what might be could be, is hauntingly uninvited.
Finally, with a procession of bridesmaids, the artist arrives in the studio room in the next piece — I do, do I? In an immaculate white gown, a veil, and a corsage, she appears to have come to take stock. Have you known yourself yet, she seems to ask as she stands in front of the room — the perfect blushing bride. Steadily, she sits down, and as if out of nowhere, pulls out a hammer and a bag of nails. And thus begins what has since been claimed to be the most cathartic experience Almirah had to offer. A rejection, a despondent cry for freedom, a willful adherence to tradition — not from a place of conformity, but from a place of familiarity. To say, it is not that I do not know what is expected of me. As Avril conclusively nails her wedding gown to the altar, the question on one’s mind is — how will she get out of this? It is nothing short of relevant and emphatically surprising as she claws out of it, triumphant in her underwear.
Avril bridges into the next piece in the dark — Don’t Explain. A tedious affair of the mundane balanced with the chaotic. As she sits in front of a table mirror needling a thread and proceeding to sew the holes in her ear, nose, and fingernails together. A tapestry of abuse, violence, and insanity.
Having traversed the questions of her own privilege, legal marriage rights of the lesbian-dom, the perception and reluctance toward curly, frizzy hair, and the domestic physical and emotional abuse — Avril leaves.
The silence returns. We are the performers now.
