The Silent Fight
by Sriparna Dutta
Delhi
Project Description
A living public archive of stitched, painted, and written testimonies by marginalized women and children in India—exhibited in public spaces to resist erasure and reclaim their narratives.
Expected Impact
"The Silent Fight: Unveiling Marginalized Narratives – Breaking the Chains of Oppression – Archival Museum of Hidden Realities – The Book of Empowered Voices": My project is not a celebration. It is not beautification. It is an archive of wounds—stitched, whispered, and remembered through the fabric of everyday survival. This living museum is a site of resistance, truth-telling, and healing. It confronts caste, class, and gender injustice through community narratives—those pushed to the margins and silenced. Through this work, I am inserting marginalized lives into India’s cultural consciousness. These embroidered testimonies, fabric books, children’s drawings, and stitched stories are acts of memory and protest. They bring to the forefront the voices of domestic workers, sex workers, Santhal weavers, Kantha artisans, rape survivors, and female farmers—whose realities are often invisibilized in mainstream cultural institutions. I want to create rupture—a space where art is no longer elitist or gallery-bound. These narratives will spill into public spaces—local trains, markets, schools, and village squares—where those who live these truths can see themselves represented. The museum will not remain still. It will move, it will speak, and it will confront. Globally, this project connects with conversations on decolonial archives, feminist resistance, and community-led healing. It is deeply rooted in India, yet it holds space for all silenced voices across borders. The change I want is not symbolic—it is structural. I want people to see, listen, and unlearn. I want policies to respond. I want one girl to teach another how to reclaim her voice. That is where transformation begins. This is not just art. This is a movement—stitched, painted, and told by those who lived it.
Applicant Background
The Silent Fight: Unveiling Marginalized Narratives – Breaking the Chains of Oppression – Archival Museum of Hidden Realities – The Book of Empowered Voices is not a new idea; it is a continuation of my long-standing caregiving art practice grounded in deep listening, community engagement, and co-authorship with women who are often unheard. For years, I have been working with communities across India—Santhal weavers, Kantha stitch artisans from Birbhum and Murshidabad, domestic workers in Mumbai and Delhi, sex workers from Kalighat, widows of Santiniketan, marginalized Muslim women in Northeast Delhi, and garbage cleaners from Karawal Nagar. These women carry not just their own burdens but also the weight of generations of systemic neglect, and I try to hold space for their stories—with care, respect, and solidarity. One of my ongoing community-based art projects, Story of Women, amplifies the lived experiences of these women through embroidered testimonies, shared paintings, and collaborative workshops. I display their work beside mine, framed equally, without hierarchy—honoring each narrative with the same accountability I give to my own. Alongside that, I initiated a grassroots social visual project called “100 Rupees”, where I ask women from different class, caste, and religious locations: “What would you do with an extra 100 rupees?” Their answers reveal the vast emotional and economic disparities shaped by structural violence. While an upper-class woman may use it for a coffee, women like Swapna Roy, a roadside food vendor in Aurosree Simantapally, Santiniketan, said: “No one is taking care of me. I run the shop late into the night and carry the whole house on my shoulders. If I ever get 100 rupees extra, I’ll buy a biryani—for myself. It’s been so long since I got anything just for me.” This ongoing archive gathers voices in multiple languages—stitched, sung, written, whispered—creating a rich repository of lived truths. I envision building The Book of Empowered Voices as a collaborative publication, and The Archival Museum of Hidden Realities as a traveling, living exhibition made with and for these communities. Through years of working across villages, metros, and transitional urban neighborhoods, my method remains the same: to share time, food, and stories with women, not as subjects but as co-creators. I do not “document” from a distance—I sit, I stitch, I listen. Now, with your support, I hope to take this work to a larger scale—deepening the archive, making it visible in institutions, public spaces, and platforms that have long excluded such realities. My experience has taught me that these women don’t need saving. They need space, dignity, and someone to believe their truth. That is what I bring. And that is what I will continue to build.
Resources Needed
- Funding
- Mentorship
- Visibility
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