Shaleen Rakesh

We are going somewhere. That is all. The surface is harder than field, the smell is wrong, there is noise from below that does not mean anything we know, but the body moves because the body knows to move, because movement is not decision so much as continuation, the way breathing continues, the way the herd continues, one body following warmth of the body ahead. We do not know we are ascending. We know the angle of the ground under our hooves. We know the one in front is still moving. That is enough. The boys are there. We know that too — the particular electricity of watching, the way attention has pressure, the way humans leak intention from every part of themselves and think they are being still. But they are not for us. They are just another condition, like wind, like smell of rain coming, like the low sound the ground makes near water. We do not perform.  We never performed. Berger said you withdrew from us the moment you no longer needed us, that the look across the fence bec...

The window frame cuts the scene cleanly — a line drawn between stage and real life. A man and woman stand side by side: skin, ribs, breath. They look outwards, and there is no performance. No heroes pose or theatrical vulnerability in their nakedness. We only see exposure, quiet and unadorned. And yet the image refuses to stay neutral. The moment the eye settles on the woman, something quickly changes. That change is the point. The man’s shirtlessness is ordinary, invisible — the kind of thing we barely register on a hot afternoon or during physical labour. The woman’s identical lack of covering carries a different charge though. It asks a question the man’s body is never made to ask. John Berger once wrote that men act while women appear — more precisely, that women are trained to watch themselves appearing. This image interrupts the habit. The woman is not embarrassed, apologetic, or conscious of being out of place. She stands with the same ease as the man beside her, which can be un...

The blaze of the new summer sun looks at me watches my body I give up any attempt at control with only my skin to respond only my surface but I retain the possibility of meditation.