Truth Dream: A spotlight on notions of beauty, aging and self-acceptance

From characters in childhood adventure stories to glamorous stars on the silver screen as adults — most people have aspired to be a figment of their own imagination.

Truth Dream is an exhibition that captured the fantasies of a few members of the transgender community and immortalised them in photographs. The project was conceptualised by Chandni, co-founder of Payana, a Bengaluru-based NGO that works towards protecting sexual minorities.

“About two months ago, Chandni approached us with this idea of working on a project with 12 of her friends who identified as transwomen, transmen, and other gender non-conforming individuals. They were all around 50 years old — a rarity within the community considering the hardships they undergo. Chandni wanted to give them a chance to step into their dream personas and she was very clear it had to be a photoshoot,” says the curator of Truth Dream, Angarika G from Maara, a media and arts organisation in Bengaluru.

“When we met them we realised most of their dream personas stemmed from mythology as well as Kannada and Tamil cinema. All of these were connected to childhood desires and fantasies, their experiences of sexual transition, love, betrayal and rejection — a mix of varied and complex stories.”

Angarika says when her team realised the potential of this platform, they quickly started setting the wheels in motion. “We got a costume designer to customise outfits as their attires were from films of the 60s and 70s. Also, since by virtue of the fact that some of them had undergone operations and we just could not just hire costumes or pick them off a shelf. We also called in a makeup artist and two photographers.”

The ladies wanted to be modelled after the Maharani of Mysore as well as movie stars Sridevi and Jayamalini, and from classics of yore. The photographs were shot both in colour and in black and white.

“The colour images were shot digitally and the black-and-white ones were shot on film to explore two different processes. The black-and-white images capture their slow transformation — makeup and costumes. The colour images are in front of hand-painted 8×10 backdrops that depicted scenes from their dreams.”

According to Angarika, a group of artists worked on the backdrops and the photo shoot took place in October over four days. In the process of making Truth Dream a reality, Maara put together a small book on the life stories of the 12 women. “They had shared their life experiences with us and we presented them in a docu-fiction format. We were very keen to not make it purely documentary as usually the narrative around the transgender community tends to be either very celebratory or very patronising.”

Titled Kannadi, which means mirror both in Kannada and Tamil, the book brings to light the complexity of identities and experiences of the community instead of portraying them as victims or icons.

At the exhibition launch at Bangalore International Centre on December 6, the 12 subjects of the exhibition presented a dance performance. “We had worked with a musician to compose a track where we recorded various elements of their daily lives — mourning, celebrations, weddings — and strung it together as a soundscape. They performed to that as well as some of their favourite film songs.”

“The premise of the exhibition is looking at experiences of beauty, aging and friendships between these people who have seen each other through a lot of ups and downs. It is as much about friendship and solidarity as it is about challenging notions of caste discrimination, gender binaries, beauty and more.”

Maara hopes they can travel with the exhibition, showcasing it in different cities around the country and hopefully abroad too.

Those interested in hosting the exhibition can mail angarika@maara.in.