Freedom

In Malvika Mahesh's flash fiction, the cage is a strange contraption, with silk curtains on the side like some horrible magician’s apparatus, and a set of plush floral pillows and a mattress outfitted on the inside. And this is where the protagonist’s wife slept when she was a child.

Anusha Krishnan’s flash fiction is a seething examination of the relationship between body image and self-esteem. Read the story to find out how she uses the cage as a metaphor to address body image issues.

Ishani Chowdary’s flash fiction is a macabre take on the fear of abandonment. Read the story to find out how the protagonist deals with the uncertainties of love and uses a cage to explore the relationship between love and freedom. 

Digitisation has opened up a world of opportunity that was inconceivable until a few decades ago. Freedom of expression is no longer limited to the privileged - all opinion matters. At the same time, digitisation can pose a serious threat to freedom as evidenced by increase in online violence and abuse, cyberbullying and stalking. Two Indians and two Germans share their differing perspectives on whether digitisation is aiding freedom or hindering it.

What represents freedom? The perception of being free varies from person to person. Here are some objects that artists relate to freedom.

Personifications of precarious lives and fraying pasts, the poems weave a tale of the joys, perils, and imperfections of queer freedom.

A vision for ‘Menstrual Freedom’, the video explores the yearning of an isolated menstruating woman from an orthodox family against society's wishes.

The embroidered artwork is a portrayal of uninhibited joy, a sense of peace & freedom for women — a seldom sight in public spaces.

A series of five short conversations between two characters, the story is about their concerns, which may be gender fluid in and of themselves, yet when addressed in interpersonal communication, carry gendered performances, labels and identities.

How can the inward and outward queer gaze be freeing not only for individuals but also for the community? More so, what is the extent of such freedom? This essay is an exploration of many such questions.

The artwork consists of a conglomeration of sentences and live drawings of people from different streams of life, when asked questions like “What is freedom?” and “Are you free?”.
 

Ever wondered what is meant by the dustbin of history? Where does all that deleted stuff from the textbooks go? The answer is, "Straight into Forbidden!"

The work is about freedom charting socio-cultural dynamics and the politics of identity. For the artist freedom could be illusionary but to live in a metaphorical cage is unbearable.

The artwork is a reflection on freedom as a plural concept - What does freedom mean to others? Through his lens, the artist bears witness to others' search for justice.

The Mehra family looked like a picture-perfect middle-class Indian family to the outside world. Yet, not a single one of them was happy. Stuck in cages of their own, they were struggling to break free when an unexpected action from one affected them all.

The film is about the freedom of art and culture, about the freedom of independent artists who were not allowed to work during the Corona crisis, or were only allowed to work in a very limited way.

This visual project reflects on the meaning of Freedom in the context of public space – the Maidan. It was developed based on photographs and on-site sketches from the Oval Maidan in Mumbai and the Maidan of Kolkata.

Food as a powerful tool of protest: The poem is a creative exploration of the use of food as a mode of raising consciousness to free ourselves from social barriers.

Eschewing binary responses of reification or rejection, this graphic essay considers the continued relevance of the prefixes “Indian” and “classical” for the body of a dancer dwelling within the body of a nation, and in doing so essays a nuanced meditation on the contemporary affordances of freedom within prefixity.

The painting "Look Within" is an attempt at depicting all humans as one, blended into one another, searching for peace and happiness – something that actually lies within us.

Monuments in public spaces through their surroundings and visitors are a magnification of the concept of freedom. The artworks are these observations processed as comics.

The artwork explores the idea of being free within an ever-changing, dynamic set of constraints - Freedom from societal expectations, financial security or just the freedom to express oneself.

Man-Eater is an audio piece that showcases the fascinating journey of a young woman through a sexual encounter with her first partner.

Explores the meaning of unfreedom as a lived experience, the writing sheds light on how individual freedom is curbed by militarization in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir.

The video-poem criticizes the exploitation of the term “freedom” for purposes of aggression and capitalism.

The poem documents the author's struggle with time blindness and is an attempt to reclaim personal freedom through the lens of nature.

The photo series portrays the journey to freedom for the Ramnamis, a lower caste tribe in India, and the permanent tattoos of "Ram" an act of defiance against the casteist regime.

This is a story of an Indian Muslim woman writer who went searching for a role model and found what she was looking for in her own family history.

The artwork focuses on the theme of freedom by means of inversion in the pandemic/post-pandemic world where reality is seemingly stratified and intangible.

The story is set in a future where democracy has failed and been replaced by a utopian form of government. It poses questions regarding objectivity, subjectivity, identity, what it means to be free and what resistance looks like in our increasingly surveilled world.

At a time when freedom in the world is on the verge of collapse due to restrictions by authoritarian systems and the Corona pandemic, it is becoming clear how public space is rapidly shrinking. What role do artists play in the defence of freedom?

The concept of freedom has always referred among other things to a vision that extends into, affects and seeks to shape the future – as we will have to relearn in this era of ecological crisis. Eric Grabow explores the relationship between freedom and sustainability from a philosophical perspective. 

How might one consider the concept of freedom? Where do neo-liberalists differ from fundamentalists? In an interview with Ekkehard Knörer, Professor Juliane Rebentisch addresses the selfie culture, love and art.

In 1990, Latvia regained its freedom after several decades behind the Iron Curtain. Russian-born Deniss Hanovs, who has been a Latvian citizen for twenty years now, asks, “Who am I to my Latvian compatriots?" He believes a shared future in freedom is possible – provided that people are alive to one another’s pain.
 

The limit of my freedom is the freedom of others – what does that mean, especially today, for our modern, complex society? Armin Nassehi talks about the concept of freedom in a world that is being rocked by one disaster after another.

Associated with luxury and the upper class, gated communities are now also spreading as a housing model for the poorest. By selling the idea of homogeneity in unequal Latin American societies, they stand for the restriction of freedom of movement and make living together in the city more difficult.

What is the correlation between love and freedom? What role does respect play in the constellation? And to what extent can love for more than one person break with traditionalist and hierarchical ideas? We talked about these questions with Deb Barreiro, cultural manager and coach for free relationships in Argentina.

How free are we to travel wherever we want to go? Nigerian author Chika Unigwe asks herself this question and is faced with the hard truth that travel is not free for everyone. It depends on your passport. 

The ideal of freedom is reflected in hundreds of Brazilian songs. Especially because samba originated in the 1910s in the country’s Black communities, for whom freedom was doubtless the most treasured ideal of all.

Western media often reproduce the picture of the suppressed Iranian woman. That harms all the women in Iran who for decades have been standing up for their freedom and rights despite great risks and the threat of persecution.

What is the state of freedom in Japanese society today? Answers from Japanese activist Momoko Nojo, who is campaigning for greater political participation, especially among younger people in her home country.