Charan Singh: Your Tongue in My Mouth

Autograph is developing a new solo exhibition by Charan Singh at our gallery in Shoreditch, featuring new commissioned work presented for the first time.

Singh’s practice is informed by more than two decades of HIV/AIDS advocacy in India and community activism. His work seeks to reclaim subaltern queer identities – including Hijra communities, long-established South Asian trans and gender-diverse groups, and Kothi communities, feminised queer and trans feminine identities – who have historically been placed outside dominant social structures.

From the 1980s onward, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) profoundly affected the Hijra and Kothi communities in South Asia due to structural marginalisation, archaic anti-sodomy laws, stigma and economic vulnerability. Life-saving information about HIV/AIDS circulated primarily in English, with no equivalent available in their mother tongue, this linguistic absence mirrored a broader cultural erasure.

Sitting at the intersection of gender, desire and the intertwined histories of Britain and India, Your Tongue in My Mouth examines how queer narratives have been obscured, omitted and reshaped by colonial legacies in both countries – particularly through the politics of language.

Through a combination of studio portraiture, archival intervention and storytelling, Singh will explore how the English language continues to shape visual, legal and cultural imaginaries of queerness in the subcontinent.