Badhosh is a practice-based research project that explores how social, cultural, and religious expectations shape queer experiences in Pakistan. Through performance art, moving image, sculpture, publication, and digital archiving, the project investigates themes of internalized guilt, self-surveillance, desire, belonging, and becoming. Drawing from interviews, personal narratives, and theoretical research, Badhosh examines how external systems of judgement gradually become internalized, influencing the ways individuals understand themselves and inhabit their bodies. Rather than presenting identity as fixed, the project approaches it as an ongoing process shaped by memory, social structures, relationships, and acts of resistance. Functioning as both an artistic practice and a research archive, Badhosh seeks to create space for reflection, visibility, and dialogue surrounding queer experience within contemporary Pakistan.
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The first performance reflects on the process through which social expectations become internalized. Through repetitive movement, bodily restraint, and acts of self-transformation, the work explores the emotional burden of conformity and the ways individuals learn to monitor, suppress, and reshape themselves in response to external pressures.
The second performance centers on desire, intimacy, and imagined connection. Through movement, projection, and symbolic gestures, it examines the relationship between longing and illusion, reflecting on the ways individuals construct emotional realities in their search for affection, recognition, and belonging.
The final performance explores acceptance, self-reconciliation, and collective belonging. Bringing together the emotional journeys established in the earlier works, it reflects on the possibility of embracing fragmented aspects of the self and moving toward connection, understanding, and shared existence.
This video documents the development of the first performance, including movement experimentation, character construction, and the exploration of themes related to guilt, self-surveillance, and emotional restraint.
This video captures the creative process behind the second performance, focusing on visual storytelling, costume development, and the construction of themes surrounding desire, intimacy, and longing.
This video follows the making of the final performance, documenting rehearsals, staging decisions, and collaborative processes that contributed to themes of acceptance, collective presence, and belonging.
The Devotee represents longing, faith, and emotional surrender. Standing beneath the pillar of light, the figure looks toward something greater than itself, believing that meaning and acceptance exist beyond the self. The red garment symbolizes desire, vulnerability, and devotion, while the covered form reflects a state of waiting rather than arrival. A body searching for answers in the light.
This publication documents the first stage of Badhosh, where identity is shaped through fear, observation, and social expectation. Through performance stills and visual narratives, it reflects on the ways silence, shame, and self-surveillance become embedded within everyday experience.
ReadThe second publication shifts toward intimacy, desire, and imagined connection. Through symbolic performances and constructed narratives, it captures the emotional tension between longing and reality, exploring the search for affection, belonging, and recognition.
ReadThe final publication brings together themes of self-acceptance, resilience, and collective belonging. It documents a movement away from isolation and toward community, considering how identity can be reclaimed through connection, understanding, and shared experience.
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