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Artist's Artwork On Khajuraho Is A Witty Comment On Censorship

Artist's 'Censored' Khajuraho Drawings Let You Peek Underneath
Akshita Chandra

Visual artist Akshita Chandra is a student at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru. In her seventh semester at the institute, she had to submit a project based on any historical event.

Chandra wanted to do something that went beyond the purely historical. As she explained to HuffPost India, “I wanted to make it relevant, drawing parallels from a historic context, and find its relevance in our contemporary world.”

One issue that had been on Chandra's mind for sometime was that of moral policing.

“I remember reading about how in 1979, F.N. Souza’s hand-written manuscript of his autobiography and 62 drawings he had sent from the United States to India were held at the customs for being too obscene. Furious, Souza had questioned whether the 'ignorant official' would still be confiscating the illustrations if they were line drawings from the Khajuraho temples," she said. "Having visited the temples myself, this rang true to what I wanted to explore through the project – What really is obscene?”

Chandra's creative response was to draw some of Khajuraho's famous erotic sculptures on paper, but with a twist. As she explains, she got working on “censoring them dynamically, so that the viewer could help censor what was underneath.” She also incorporated elements that referred to contemporary instances of moral policing and censorship in India.

Thanks to Chandra's 'dynamic drawings' and deft paperwork, the viewer gets to play the role of the censor but can also take a peek underneath to see what is being censored. The project took her four months to complete and she very appropriately titled it ‘Being Censitive’.

Her creative comment on the contemporary culture of censorship and moral policing went viral after she posted it on Tumblr. Here are the situations that inspired her sketches:

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.