Notes on Kashmiri Visualities

Abstract

Abstract This essay explores the various modes of visualities and visual production in Kashmir. It begins with mapping the existing state visualities that use hypervisibilization, victimization, criminalization, and depoliticization as modalities to represent Kashmir. In recent years, long-standing counternarratives to these representations have met with increasing repression, engendering a visual stagnancy. Earlier, countervisuals by photojournalists confronted state visualities by directing the gaze toward Kashmiri bodies. This essay argues that the repeated production and circulation of these realistic images have also reached a point of visual fatigue. At this juncture of a seeming visual impossibility, the essay proposes creative configurations and visual imaginaries through artistic visioning as a means to continue the work of visual production.