Vestiges 2.0 is Exploring What Utopia Looks Like for People of Colour

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Vestiges 2.0 is a series diving into manufactured utopias, building itself on the language of mainstream fantasy and sci fi media (spaces that PoC are largely absent from or exist in a fetishised and tokenised state) and subverting it. The fantastical and otherworldly narratives in the media’s collective psyche often fails to centre stories around multi-faceted PoC characters. Vestiges 2.0 is a series creating a new utopia with a South Asian protagonist, set amidst manicured, hyperreal kitsch landscapes. The central figure exists in limbo, suspended in time and undergoing stages of metamorphosis. She is a pensive contemporary avatar of Durga, a pixie elf, a mermaid, a bored Barbarella, questioning and dismantling the tropes that populate these troubled landscapes - often the male gaze, fetishisation, whitewashing and cultural appropriation.

Photography and Production: Nasrah Omar | Model: Thasfia Chowdhury