The body remembers inappropriate touch in Durga Venkatesan's 'Touchy Topic'

The experimental performance art piece Touchy Topic was staged at Shoonya - Centre for Art and Somatic Practices in Bengaluru, India on June 23, 2024, as part of Janaru, a two-day art festival by the city’s Beru Art and Cultural Foundation. Created by Durga Venkatesan, a local performance artist, Touchy Topic addressed the sensitive matter of inappropriate touching. She developed the work in the Tell Me Your Story workshop in 2023, facilitated by the performance artist Mohammed Ellyas Lehry. The artist connected with STIR for a video conversation that shed light on her creative journey and the socially relevant performance art piece.

The Indian artist has previously performed at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) festival in 2023, among other platforms. She sees herself as an artist who is passionate about using her creative voice to address critical social issues. Touchy Topic is built on the artist’s belief that “the body remembers”, as outlined in the press note.

Each member of the audience used a finger dipped in paint to leave a visible mark on her body, recalling where they had been touched inappropriately over the course of their lives.

In the June 2024 performance, Venkatesan’s audience walked up to her one at a time as she stood motionless. Each member of the audience used a finger dipped in paint to leave a visible mark on her body, recalling where they had been touched inappropriately over the course of their lives. Visitors who were uncomfortable touching her could point out the spot on their own bodies, which she would mirror on hers.

Attending and participating in Touchy Topic was cathartic for some and revelatory for others. As Venkatesan tells STIR, “Some people felt angry, some people felt really emotional, some people realised that something wrong happened [to them in the past] during the experience.”

This was the third time that the social art piece was performed. The first iteration was shown in December 2023, at Prithvi House in Mumbai for Thespo, India’s largest youth theatre festival. It was then performed at Lahe Lahe, an arts and culture space in Bengaluru. Venkatesan mentions feeling overwhelmed by the pent-up emotions that the audience released during the performance at Shoonya. To her, it was palpable in the way that they interacted with her body. In her words, “There was a sense of pain I felt through the performance this time…my body, over the course of the 60 minutes, was really becoming sensitive.”

In this version of Touchy Topic, Venkatesan included 60 diaries. Visitors could use a single page from one of these diaries after engaging with the artist, for any kind of self-expression; however, the pages could not be taken home. Venkatesan is interested in seeing how audiences would build on the self-expression of those who preceded them. She mentions that she may collect a sizeable quantity of these pages in the near future and use them in a curatorial capacity.

Discussing what comes next, she tells STIR she wants to “...build a space around a topic that requires dialogue, and just go with that.” Venkatesan is currently developing a piece around women and the kitchen, inspired by her childhood memories.

Click on the top banner to watch the full conversation.

'Touchy Topic' was performed on June 23, 2024, at Shoonya Centre for Art and Somatic Practices in Bengaluru, India.