Upside Down
by Siva Sai Jeevanantham

National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, India
Graduation year: 2020

portfolio winners call 'WHAT'S THE URGENCY?', 2021

In India, we firmly believe that a child’s playfulness is a barrier to achieving ‘success’. A good child is one who earns good marks, gets enrolled in an acclaimed college, to find a job that pays well - a success manufacturing machine. In this process, childishness is replaced with hyper- competitiveness; curiosity is curtailed ; innocence is looked down upon. Every time I feel the need to express dissent, I photograph. Sometimes it is a coping mechanism, sometimes it is just an unruly representation of my mind. For this work, I collaborated with school students to construct images that unleash their playfulness and curiosity - by creating a space of constructive anarchy. By sharing control over the image-making process - together, we made performances and images that were jolly but critical of the confining education system that the parents, teacher, and the adult society has developed. Indian Education System hustles the students towards the society's definition of success. For me as an adult, this project is my way of embracing the innocence that I had kept hidden - to stand upside down, to reinforce that adults should nurture their innocence as they grow up.


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