Kruttika Susarla is a graphic designer and illustrator currently living in New Delhi. She participated in the 36 Days Of Type project – an annual call to designers and artists around the globe to do their take on the alphabet and number series.
Kruttika put her own spin on the project by choosing to focus on the Indian feminist movement, using each day and each alphanumeric character to represent a different facet, personality, or issue within the diverse Indian feminist movement.
“I wanted to work on a series that would contextualise the feminist movement within the realities and experiences of women and minorities in India. I sought to keep this within the realm of Indian feminism because the issues surrounding women and minorities here are so complex—it’s mixed with religion, caste, sexuality and majority of public discourse is devoid of these intersectional realities,” says Kruttika.
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Kruttika says that the project involved a lot of reading. “It was really like an epic rabbit hole where one book or one site recommending another and another and so on — books like Seeing Like a Feminist, Recovering Subversion, articles on Kafila, Crosscurrents, Raiot, etc.”
All the reading was also a learning experience for the artist. “This process opened me up to a lot of new understandings. For example, I had no idea that the term ‘woman’ was not so binary if you consider queer politics. This sensitised me to how marginalised communities found power to organise and demand rights depending on how they choose to represent themselves.”
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Kruttika Susarla’s letter series focussed on concepts – breaking down issues like consent, bodily integrity, gender performativity, and sex worker’s rights and dignity. Her number series however, focussed on actual movements that have taken place in the history of Indian feminism. The artist made sure to focus on diverse and intersectional movements.
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The project received a lot of positive feedback. While the artist had braced herself to receive a certain amount of trolling for the feminist content of her art (feminists worldwide will commiserate), the project actually created a lot of healthy dialogue. Kruttika says that “many people were able to share these opinions and engage in productive conversations that facilitated new understandings.”
She plans to undertake further projects on similar themes, based on the learnings from this project. “Because these issues are so complex, it also means that this is a continuous process of unlearning and learning. I’m still reading some of the books I discovered during my research for this project. There’s so much about feminism and gender politics that I don’t know and I’m definitely going to use my art to understand and question this better.”
The FII team loved the project – especially its intersectional nature. We can’t wait to see more from Kruttika Susarla!
You can check out Kruttika’s entire letter series and number series, as well as follow her work on Instagram and Behance.
