Name: Ashika Singh

Guide: Prof. Sudesh Balan

Course: Visual Communication

Seen Unseen

For years, transgender individuals have struggled for acceptance, protection, and visibility even among other minorities. A big part of the transgender community still feels unsafe and excluded in our society. The project is an effort to encourage the society to emphasize and acknowledge the transgender people. Through the medium of poetry and illustrations, I have attempted to capture the essence of the life of the transgender people- their emotions, their mindset and their realities as they live on the fringe of our society. These poems have been inspired from my experience with them and the various stories they told me during my research. The output of this project is  an illustrated poetry book.

The book cover holds the complete essence of the book. The parallel one into one face visual was created to show the inside soul of the transgender which usually remains unseen.

Poems were written on the transgender people after a detailed study and meetings with them. Some poems are the stories which I heard from them and some are based on my experience with them. Later images were made to compliment the writings which I kept abstract.

Illustrations were completely hand drawn and painted. Some illustrations are metaphorically depicted where as some directly based on the writings. Attempt is made to convey the meaning of the poems in the best possible way through bold illustrations.