Being from the Global South doesn’t make you a suffering artist by default. But that’s what the international circuit wants. Caste. Farmers. Floods. Protests. Tragedy as identity. Struggle as branding.
It’s become a formula. And too many artists are falling into it—because it sells. Because it gets you into biennales. Because it gives the Western gaze exactly what it wants: a moral high ground.
Yes, we have problems. Deep, urgent ones. But to flatten the entire subcontinent into a trauma narrative is exploitative. We are not just stories of poverty and oppression. We are thinkers, formalists, futurists, provocateurs.
The real farce is how little nuance makes it through. Complexity is inconvenient. And subtlety doesn’t travel well in funding applications.
This performance of pain is hollow. It doesn’t change systems. It just makes them feel better.
We need more courage, not just to speak truth, but to step outside the script.