“SICK OF BOLLYWOOD” - Tasmiya Ahammad & Aahana Nag

A cinematic editorial by Tasmiya Ahammad and Aahana Nag

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHAISKID (AAHANA NAG)
MUSE: TASMIYA AHAMMAD

“SICK OF BOLLYWOOD is a celebration of traditional Bollywood cinema and South Asian femininity, and seeks to illustrate the eternal Brown Woman bathing in the Ganges River with the generations of brown women before her. Originally created for Tasmiya’s pedestrian white high school art assessment, these desi grrrls contemplate whether brown femininity will ever be appreciated without the orientalist aestheticised lens of South Asian beauty. After a cultural exploration of self-exotification and fetishization of brown culture to be finally deemed consumable to white audiences, these two desi grrrls champion radical decolonisation of their identity and realise: WE ARE SO SICK OF WHITE PEOPLE ASKING US ABOUT BOLLYWOOD.”