BLURRING THE LINES
BLURRING THE LINES

Jyoti Shrestha

Chhyake (Language of Skin)

EDITION

2025, Winner

school

Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka, Bangladesh

links

@ztstha ↗

Chhyake is a personal and political exploration of queerness, body image, and intergenerational trauma in Nepal, told through the language of skin. In Nepal Bhasa, a language spoken by indigenous Newar people, the term Chhyake refers to the marks left by skin disease. Within my family, it was used to describe freckles—a word that should have signified beauty. Instead, it carried shame, rejection, and silence. Chhyake examines how bodies—especially queer, gender-nonconforming, and visibly marked ones—are regulated by family, society, and patriarchal norms. Families often disown children, language becomes a tool of violence, and ancestral rights, healthcare, and opportunities are withheld. Despite symbolic legal progress, including recognition of same-sex marriage in 2023, these protections rarely translate into lived safety or dignity. Around 900,000 LGBTQIA+ individuals in Nepal face discrimination, and a 2023 UN Women study found 81% experienced violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Rejection and erasure often begin at home but extend into institutions, public spaces, and cultural narratives. Through self-portraiture, collage, text, and layered visual textures, Chhyake confronts these violences while asserting resilience, dignity, and the right to exist authentically. The work interrogates cultural mechanisms that perpetuate shame and silence, showing how inherited trauma can be unlearned. It weaves memory, vulnerability, and courage, asking viewers to witness what society instructs people to hide. This ongoing body of work is both an archive and an act of reclamation—honoring queer lives, rewriting inherited narratives, and reclaiming agency and visibility. Chhyake is for anyone who has ever felt unseen in their own skin.

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Jyoti Shrestha

Chhyake (Language of Skin)

EDITION

2025, Winner

school

Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka, Bangladesh

links

@ztstha ↗

Chhyake is a personal and political exploration of queerness, body image, and intergenerational trauma in Nepal, told through the language of skin. In Nepal Bhasa, a language spoken by indigenous Newar people, the term Chhyake refers to the marks left by skin disease. Within my family, it was used to describe freckles—a word that should have signified beauty. Instead, it carried shame, rejection, and silence. Chhyake examines how bodies—especially queer, gender-nonconforming, and visibly marked ones—are regulated by family, society, and patriarchal norms. Families often disown children, language becomes a tool of violence, and ancestral rights, healthcare, and opportunities are withheld. Despite symbolic legal progress, including recognition of same-sex marriage in 2023, these protections rarely translate into lived safety or dignity. Around 900,000 LGBTQIA+ individuals in Nepal face discrimination, and a 2023 UN Women study found 81% experienced violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Rejection and erasure often begin at home but extend into institutions, public spaces, and cultural narratives. Through self-portraiture, collage, text, and layered visual textures, Chhyake confronts these violences while asserting resilience, dignity, and the right to exist authentically. The work interrogates cultural mechanisms that perpetuate shame and silence, showing how inherited trauma can be unlearned. It weaves memory, vulnerability, and courage, asking viewers to witness what society instructs people to hide. This ongoing body of work is both an archive and an act of reclamation—honoring queer lives, rewriting inherited narratives, and reclaiming agency and visibility. Chhyake is for anyone who has ever felt unseen in their own skin.

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