YCP 2025 Fellow
Lakshmi
From the landscapes of India
Current Practice
Independent Researcher and Writer based in Chennai, presently unravelling the politics of love and sexualities through embodied research and setting up a silent, creative digital archive.
Bio
I am Lakshmi, a perennially curious collector of conversations. I am a writer, storyteller and independent researcher, intrigued by themes of love, intimacies and sexualities in their most expansive subjective and non-normative ways.
Presently, I am writing a blog series, ‘Oh This Thing Called Love’, where I interrogate the practice of love by using the book ‘The Forty Rules of Love’ as a starting point, in addition to setting up a silent creative digital archive, ‘An Aro-Ace Memory Project’.
I am keen to create and perform contemporary folktales that question the status quo through play and encourage critical self-reflection.
Focus Areas for Exploration
As a part of the Young Critics Program 2025, I aim to start building a trans-disciplinary practice of critical inquiry into the politics of love, justice and freedom.
These are often interrelated themes frequently used as an excuse for each other. They can be emancipatory or deepen a chokehold, and I seek to work with these polarities through varied modalities, within this collaborative and experimental space.
I take this opportunity to engage with my creative practice to sit with the discomfort of the yet to be known and the unknowable that animates my curiosity.