The country stepped into a brand new year with the grim news of doctored photographs of Muslim women listed for online auction through a derogatory application called ‘Bulli Bai’ posted on GitHub, a hosting platform. After days of investigation, Mumbai police arrested Shweta Singh (18) and Mayank Rawat (20) from Uttarakhand, Vishal Kumar Jha (21) from Bengaluru, and Delhi police had arrested Niraj Bishnoi (21) from Assam who is also the alleged mastermind behind the app. A similar attempt at harassment and cyber bullying was made in July last year through ‘Sulli Deals’, an app that created profiles of more than 80 Muslim women using publicly-available photographs, and describing them as ‘deals of the day’—26-year-old Aumkareshwar Thakur from Madhya Pradesh has been arrested for creating it. Such cases of online harassment—blackmails, rape threats, stalking, and more—that degrade women, are a daily reality.
Addressing this issue by means of hard-hitting imagery is visual artist Isha Yadav (30) through her ongoing project Museum of Rape Threats and Sexism. Yadav’s archival project, which she began in 2019, takes the form of a digital installation.
A doctoral student of women and gender studies at Ambedkar University, Yadav documents online instances of misogyny, sexism, and violence through crowdsourced screenshots—these include messages, comments, stories—that she has received from women across the world, showcasing online threats of sexual and physical violence. “This installation is a social movement that resists sexual violence, brings them to light, is peaceful and democratic, and in demonstrative sense engages the conversation about the verbal violence women endure...,” writes Yadav in her concept note.
Archiving instances of violence A 2020 report by UK-based humanitarian organisation Plan International revealed that 58 per cent of young women have faced online harassment at some point. The survey, which was carried out in 22 countries including India, reflects on the rape culture prevalent in society, and how we underplay the seriousness of this situation. It is noted that due to the anonymity of online interactions, rape threats on the Internet are often hurled at women in response to a difference of opinions, on matters both complex and trivial. Such documented aggression, usually communicated through gendered slurs, are often attempts at silencing women. Yadav received a rape threat once for expressing her dislike towards a Bollywood actor. “The bar is so low that a woman cannot say that she dislikes an actor without getting trolled,” she mentions. Her project, which “memorialises emotions of shame, trauma, and rage” thereby becoming a commentary on the lived experiences of women, has been the first recipient of the Linda Stein Upstander Award in 2021. A resident of Gurugram, Yadav’s doctoral research is also closely linked to crimes against women. This online museum is thus both part of her research as well as a passion project, she shares.
Documenting experiences Over the last two years, she has received over 500 screenshots featuring similar inappropriate content. Yadav has selected about 160 that she plans to display at a physical exhibition open for public viewing. Yadav has spent numerous hours going through the screenshots she has received and speaking to the women who shared them. Her archival project takes the form of a mixed-media installation incorporating audio, video, and pictorial (via screenshots) accounts of such crimes. “Many women came to me and told me that they don’t have proof and that is understandable because our general reaction [to such comments] is ‘I want to delete and block it’. So I started documenting their stories as well,” she explains. Yadav has embroidered these stories on a white cloth, and placed the screenshots and images in golden frames along with an achiever’s ribbon—through this, she attempts to “bring out the satire” in this exhibition that eventually would take the form of an “experiential walkaway”. The metaphor of the museum is evoked to show how ingrained and massive the problem of online harassment is. The names of the perpetrators and victims stay hidden in her series since the focus of Yadav’s work is not religion or caste identity but the language used to silence women.
Overwhelming imagery Since the material she deals with is extremely sensitive, Yadav admits that the process has felt extremely taxing at times. “It often gets difficult to understand that this [the screenshots] is just static imagery of a problem you are working with, and it is not really said to you. You lose that boundary somewhere so that is a personal challenge I face,” she explains.
Yadav also plans to add a trigger warning note at the entrance of the exhibition, to protect the viewers and alert them of content that might be distressing. Though her initial plan was to open the museum for public viewing in January this year, Yadav is currently skeptical of this given the recent surge in COVID-19 cases. “My only challenge right now is that public viewing of the exhibition is difficult because of the pandemic. I might showcase it as a digital exhibition if the physical viewing does not happen,” she concludes.