A Thousand Cuts - Sujata Setia
Derived from the ancient Asian form of torture -“Death by a thousand cuts” or “Lingchi”, “A thousand Cuts” is a series of portraits and stories that present a photographic study of patterns of domestic abuse in the South Asian community.
Derived from the ancient Asian form of torture -“Death by a thousand cuts” or “Lingchi”, “A thousand Cuts” is a series of portraits and stories that present a photographic study of patterns of domestic abuse in the South Asian community.
I have borrowed the metaphorical meaning of Lingchi to showcase the cyclical nature of domestic abuse.
The continuous act of chipping at the soul of the abused, is expressed by making cuts on the portrait of the participant.
The paper used to print the portrait is a thin A4 sheet, depicting the fragility of her existence. I have kept the project at a domestic scale, using resources, I had available within the home as a metaphorical reflection of violence occurring within the human space. The final artwork is photographed in a very closed, tight crop so as to express a sense of suffocation and absence of room for movement.
The red colour underneath the portraits signifies not just martyrdom and strength but also the onset of a new beginning.
“A thousand Cuts” is an effort to understand abuse from many different frames of references.
I started working on the series a year ago, not knowing how far I will be able to go with it. It was a difficult subject - studying patterns of Domestic Abuse within the South Asian Community. The biggest challenge for me was to be able to find participants who would be willing to talk about their abuse. There was also the fear of whether I would be able to represent their narratives with sensitivity, care and in a way that they choose to share it.
As a South Asian woman myself, I have had a strictly value based upbringing. To endure pain. To decorate my trauma. To consider the needs of others’ before my own. To consider myself complete only once I married. To not focus on being self reliant but to instead spend my entire early life, preparing myself to be dependent on a man whom I shall marry one day… These were only a few of those values instilled in me.
As I embarked on this journey to meet with, engage with and then narrate stories of women who have experienced violence in their lives, I was faced with these value based pillars over and over again.
Recurring in those interactions was “the fear of financial insecurity.” Because our cultural and genetic predisposition never allowed for us to dream of being financially independent, it became the primary barrier when it was time to leave an abusive relationship.
“A thousand Cuts” is the story of that woman’s life. A woman who rose from the ashes, despite enduring a thousand cuts made on her soul and her existence by the bearers of power and control.
And “A Thousand Cuts” is an appeal for an equitable and more tolerable world where narratives of pain and trauma are allowed to breathe without fear of judgement and stigma.
The reason for creating this series was to found a safe space for individual narratives and lived experiences of domestic violence survivors to be shared and spoken of freely. Without fear of stigma or judgement. Somewhere within that safe space, I found the road to getting acquainted to my own abuse as well. The abuse that I started witnessing from when I was in my mother's womb.
From an outsider, I became and insider to this intimate cohort of women.
Through these conversations, each of the participants and myself... we understood our trauma at a deeper level. Between us, we created a vector of faith that helped us locate repeated cultural, social, parental, economic and genetic coercive patterns that gave our individual journeys a certain similitude... a sense of universality, which was both deeply disturbing, yet at the same time liberating in a way for us.
“A Thousand Cuts,” is a collaborative body of work created with the courage and strength of survivors of domestic violence. It is our genuine hope that the world will one day, abandon the conspiracy of silence for a collective future where talking about one's own abuse is normalised. .
