i will go and come back (వెళ్ళొస్తా)

Created over five years of returning home in Vijayawada, India, వెళ్ళొస్తా traces the circular nature of my gender identity, negotiating my belonging to womanhood as my mother’s daughter and my alienation from it as a queer, non-binary person.

Vellostha (వెళ్ళొస్తా) is the tenderness and rage I feel visiting my hometown of Vijayawada, India as a queer, gender non-binary person. In Vijayawada, I shave my beard, hide my undercut and wear traditionally feminine clothing. My identity is morphed by voices of shame and control. I become my past: a nostalgic traditionally gendered self, frozen in place and time. I navigate this dysphoria by photographing womanhood and gender expression around me: my mother tying her hair before breakfast, my friends in lehengas by the river, women in sarees heading to domestic work. These are visuals that are familiar but feel alien. In Brooklyn, I am fully myself. With the safety of the 5,000 miles of distance, I make self-portraits that question the gender binary through gesture, body language, and clothing. My rage, incapable of existing formally within a photograph, emerges instead through freehand Telugu text and drawings of faces using the Telugu alphabet.

Vellostha in my native tongue Telugu translates to ‘I will go and come back’. Created over five years of returning home, the project traces the circular nature of my gender identity, negotiating my belonging to womanhood as my mother’s daughter and my alienation from it as a queer, non-binary person. The work dissolves the patriarchal gaze of my hometown and the nostalgic eye of my parents, both that shaped how I am perceived and how I see myself. I am no longer two selves. There is only one gaze. There is only me (నేనే నేను).