This Indian photographer’s embroidered portraits dignify domestic abuse victims in North India
For two years, the New York-based photographer crossed the hinterland of Rajasthan and Punjab, photographing the survivors of domestic violence. But its process has not finished documenting women. Once the portraits are taken, she transposed them on a khadi fabric at home and sent them back to the subjects. Women were free to do whatever they wanted with their portraits – embroid, paint, tear, sew, scratch. Bras embroidered three women around her, her small army. This work of art, in addition to the portraits of women that Malik consciously sought, is part of his series “Nāents”. When other women have heard of “Nāents”, they contacted Malik with their own stories, encouraging friends who had suffered the same atrocities to manifest themselves. These portraits are part of a new series linked to “Nāents” entitled “Jāḷī – Meshs of Resistance”.
Winning the confidence of women to photograph them in their own house, the same sites of violence where they had been mistreated, could not have been an easy feat. It helped that Malik was not a stranger, her gaze was not white and that she was not a journalist trying to extract a story. Many of them were women she had met when they worked in non -profit centers for survivors of domestic violence through Punjab and Rajasthan. “The women of these self-assistance groups would work on traditional embroidery like Phulkari and told me about their friends who had not yet visited the centers but working in their homes,” says Malik. “They took me to long walks in their villages to make me meet these friends. This is how the network grew up. ”
