Dead Bodies of the Youth
Vandana
2009
Performance Video
4 Minutes
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist
DESCRIPTION
Dead Bodies of the Youth is a satire on child marriage — a practice still prevalent in parts of India in the twenty-first century. The bride is personified as marriage itself; the roses are a metaphor for the immature youth whose lives are cut short by it. The act of chopping nine hundred and ninety-six roses presents the consequences of early marriage — youth destroyed methodically, one after another, by the ritual that claims to celebrate them.
I appear in a bridal outfit in a bedroom. I chop nine hundred and ninety-six red roses with a knife on a chopping board.
The chopped roses from this work were carried as a funeral pyre in the live performance Dead Bodies of The Youth.
Vandana 