Verve – July 2019

22 JUNE - JULY 2019

OUT

OF THE

BINARY

An LGBTQIA+ collective from Ahmedabad brings unsung South-Asian

narratives under the umbrella of its annual zine, Tilt. QueerAbad

co-founder, Anahita Sarabhai, tells Ojas Kolvankar how up-and-coming

queer artists are portraying their multi-hued perspectives

What inspired you to start Tilt?

When we started QueerAbad we dreamt

of many things. Co-founder and former

member Shamini Kothari and I curated both

the zines, as we were interested in queer

art practices. Her interest came from an

academic perspective and mine from an

artistic one. We wanted to turn our interest

into something tangible, so we continued

thinking of how we could integrate design,

make it accessible and give a platform to

the queer community to showcase — and

speak about — their work.

In the beginning, it was a passion project

for both of us. We hoped to bring together

the queer art that was around us but wasn’t

being seen in mainstream media. Along

with topics like body image, we wanted our

identities to bleed into the artwork that we

created. While we were thinking of a name

for the zine, we went through multiple ideas

that we thought could symbolise queer

aesthetics, one of which was to consider

something that is off-centre, or not straight.

But we realised that the concept of tilting

our perspectives and queerness itself

function to do this; so we came up with Tilt.

Why is the zine focused on South-Asian

queer people?

The focus on South-Asian, brown, queer

bodies is a deliberate one. We want to put

forth their stories to bring them into the

larger conversations. This platform also helps

the community to interact with each other

in interesting ways and share experiences

that are starkly different or disturbingly

similar across the board. There is a severe

lack of representation in mainstream

media. Perhaps it will help if more zines or

alternative forms of media like ours focus on

these identities to bring them to the fore.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSHUA NAVALKAR

FACING PAGE: A PHOTO-COLLAGE OF THE COVERS OF BOTH THE EDITIONS OF TILT