Cycle of Self-Silencing
Critical view of therapy from an Indian feminist point of view.
Royal College of Art - MA Information Experience Design
Live Multimedia Performance
AV Installation - Film, Sound, Movement & Narrative.
Concept -
Where do you go when the world silences you?
Is it what it says it is?
The place you go to heal.
Does it do what it says it does?
When you come back broken to heal again.
Does it even carry the weight of healing?
When it secretly starts silencing you.
Step into the live multimedia performance to explore and introspect on the truth of therapy through a critical feminist lens of India.
The cycle of self-silencing is unending.
Until you mark the change.
Research
This project grounds itself on the critically acclaimed Indian feminist views of therapy while strengethening its foundation with embodied experiences of young Indian women to exhibit the cycle of self-silencing.
India, a collectivist community rich in culture, primarily functions on strict hierarchical structures, indirect communication and group harmony. To maintain structure, it relies heavily on deeply collective behaviours, learning, and thinking patterns. It focuses on the “Philosophy of the non-philosophical”- the uncritically adopted conception of the world that ordinary people inherit from their socio-cultural environment (Deshpande, 2003).
The inheritance of this traditional ideology with neoliberalism, modernity, and linguistic and cultural constraints on expressing one’s inner emotions, gives rise to an identity crisis among young Indians, especially women.
The Cultural Constraint
Phase 1 - Silencing
With increasing acceptance of westernised therapy, the overarching idealistic outlook which promotes providing essential tools for liberation, empowering one to independently solve the underlying issues, sits well with many individuals.
However, a critically acclaimed view from the lens of feminism in India states that, “ The mainstream mental health disciplines of psychiatry and psychology were nonetheless resistant to recognising the external societal conditions and unequal power relations that affect women’s psychological well-being. ” (Vindhya, 2024).
This opposes the claim that therapy makes, showing a major lack of awareness and a set of biases within the mental health institutional structures in India that lead to ignorance of feminine concerns, mental health and needs.
Critical Feminist View on Therapy
Phase 2 - Silencing
The constant back and forth between these two phases of silencing creates a deeply internalised loop of self-silencing that indirectly creates systemic oppression for women.
This provides a crucial insight into critiques of therapy that ignore its structural roots. It also shows how therapy acts as a mere safety valve for survival rather than a tool for liberation in a collectivist community.
Cycle of Self-Silencing
Phase 3
