When I was at Chennai’s Pride Walk, it was all sunshine and rainbows everywhere, literally. Colourful masquerade masks, flags, and plaque cards, everything and everyone grabbed my attention. Yet there were two particular paraphernalias that stayed with me, a hand-painted canvas of BR Ambedkar against the LGBTQIA+ rainbow background and of Periyar burning the recently introduced Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, amongst other mixed media artworks at the walk. Maybe that’s what art does: it turns heads, makes us observe, think, and then, simply stays with us.
Over the years, the art’s medium has evolved, platform has transformed, queer legislature has changed (or atleast tried to), but the art movement hasn’t stopped or slowed down for anybody. If anything, it has just become visible to wider audiences through social media. “It’s a silent protest, a silent activism through art. ‘Artivism’. Maybe my way of showing gratitude to my community,” says digital artist Parameshwaran alias Paramu San, whose Instagram page, @queer.azhagiyal, has become a visual archive of celebrating queer lives through a Tamil lens.
For him, the need to create began not from what existed, but from what didn’t. Queer representation was never entirely absent. But it almost always arrived filtered through unfamiliar cultures, languages, and aesthetics. Rarely did it resemble the Tamil homes, streets, traditions, and people he knew. “We could find queer representation, but rarely queer representation that felt culturally familiar. We seldom saw ourselves reflected through Tamil languages, aesthetics, traditions, or everyday realities. Being seen is important, but belonging goes beyond visibility. It is the feeling that your story, culture, and identity deserve space without needing to be translated or justified. That absence made us understand how powerful culturally-rooted representation can be,” says Parameshwaran.
And so, the absence slowly transformed into an artistic language of its own. His illustrations dress queer people in familiar clothing, jewellery, darker skin tones, local symbolism, and cultural practices. “It is our way of saying that queerness and Tamil identity do not exist in opposition to each other. They’ve always been here,” he adds.
If Parameshwaran’s work is about reclaiming cultural belonging, artist Naveen Daniel visually focuses on cross-solidarity and gives voice to the marginalised across sections. For the Dalit artist with disability, who is a demisexual illustrator, art, personally, became a language for emotions where words often failed. “The emotions I return to most often are grief, sadness, loneliness, hope, and resilience. Art initially became a way for me to process pain and express emotions that I found difficult to put into words.”
His illustrations often emerge from lived experiences — of disability, isolation, and queerness — but they rarely remain there. Instead of allowing pain to become the final narrative, Naveen consciously paints towards hope. “I paint the world not only as it is, but as I wish it could be. Through my work, I imagine more inclusive, accessible, and compassionate futures where disabled, queer, caste-oppressed, and other marginalised people can exist with dignity and joy,” explains Naveen.
It is perhaps this shift that defines contemporary queer artivism. While earlier narratives were often compelled to justify queer existence and talk about their struggles, today’s artists are increasingly asking questions such as: What does queer joy look like?
That question, perhaps, found its largest canvas on the recently-unveiled mural along Anna University’s Kotturpuram wall. Stretching across a public space traversed daily by Chennaiites, the mural does not centre the textbook heroes. Instead, it celebrates the lives of extraordinary humans. Mixed-media artist Ghana NB, who led the collaborative project with Aravani Art Project and Anonymous Artist Collective, an idea initiated by Tamizhachi Thangapandian and her team, intentionally moved away from familiar portrayals of queer identity. Staying away from the usual representation of “a very perverted view of queer people”, Ghana admits that they had the responsibility to move beyond stereotypical sketches. “The point (of the wall mural) was to actually normalise queer lives. Queer people are already expressive through their clothing, grooming and makeup. We didn’t need to exaggerate anything. We just needed to create personalities.”
The simplicity opted for is deliberate. Rather than framing queer identity through romance, trauma or conflict; the mural quietly insists that everyday existence itself deserves visibility.
Queer volunteers painted alongside professional artists, each encouraged to leave fragments of themselves on the wall. And just like that a simple yet profound addition made it to the wall. “One of the artists asked me if they could write ‘Gender is Political’ on the wall. I said, ‘Go ahead.’ As they were painting it, they had goosebumps because it felt powerful to write those words in a public space. I feel sometimes we never call out the problem. Unless you name something as a problem, you’re never going to address it. That statement says we’re here, we’re not here to be dismissed, and we’re here in the nicest way possible,” Ghana says, with unapologetic pride in her voice.
In many ways, that spirit of collaboration mirrors the larger philosophy of queer activism itself. It is less about individual expression than collective memory. Even when these artists speak about it, they rarely describe confrontation. Instead, they speak about recognition. For Naveen, representation means refusing to reduce marginalised communities to suffering and portray them as “complex, beautiful human beings with dreams, creativity, love, and agency”. For Parameshwaran, success arrives in the quietest of moments when someone viewing his work thinks, ‘That looks like me’. For Ghana, it is the possibility that someone may walk away feeling just a little less alone.
But what does this artivism offer the artist in return? All the artists land on one point: meaningfulness. “Art gives me a language to communicate experiences and ideas that are sometimes difficult to express through words alone. Creating work around these themes helps me process my own experiences while also connecting with others who may see parts of themselves reflected in the work,” says Naveen. Parameshwaran concurs that creating queer-centred work feels empowering and meaningful. He adds, “It allows us to transform lived experiences into shared narratives, build connections within the community, and contribute to a growing archive of queer stories and perspectives.” Ghana, meanwhile, takes a strong stance on why art always hits hard. “I feel art is the best way to disturb people. It’s a very graceful way to disturb people. I hope it disturbs a lot of people in the right way and comforts a lot of people in the right way too. Comfort the uncomfortable and disturb the comfortable — that’s what I want it to do.”