Article 21

The work moves between the present-day story of an Indian migrant couple in Australia navigating the final stages of the citizenship process; the recent protests at Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi; and the constitutional debates that shaped India’s founding vision of rights and belonging.

During their Utp residency, the artists developed Intimate Struggles: How to Have Conversations across Difference, a dialogue-performance that explored the conditions of this collaboration across disciplinary, political, and personal difference. Drawing on law, performance, and lived experience, the presentation examined the “contract” as both a legal and creative form, culminating in a collaboratively drafted “constitution” for Article 21's ongoing development.

CREATIVE TEAM

Nithya Nagarajan

Danish Sheikh

Intimate struggles: how to have conversations across differenceby Nithya Nagarajan and Danish Sheikh – presentation

As a part of Another World Festival 's Human Rights in the Arts Symposium

Event Date and Time: Friday 16 November, 10-5pm

Location: Utp, Bankstown Arts Centre, 5 Olympic Parade Bankstown NSW

Submit your expression of interest here

View the full program of Another World Festival here

Artist Bios:

Nithya Nagarajan is an interdisciplinary artist-writer-curator of Tamil ancestry. In 2024, Nithya co-created and co-directed the critically acclaimed dance-theatre work Nakiya: A Dancing Girl at Belvoir St Theatre. Select creative credits include The Jungle and The Sea (Assistant Director – Belvoir St Theatre 2022), Sacred Grooves of Secular Spaces (Director, MPavilion 2020) and Outwitted! (Co-Director, Happenstance 2017).  Currently, Nithya serves as Curator and Artist Development at Parramatta Artist Studios. She was previously co-Artistic Director at Arts House, International Engagement Adviser - Asia at Creative Australia and Manager - Community and Participation at NIDA. She is the co-founder of South Asian artist collective H-ME W-RK.  

Nithya holds an award-winning PhD in Performance Studies and is the co-founder of South Asian artist collective H-ME W-RK. 

Danish Sheikh is a legal scholar and playwright based at La Trobe Law School in Melbourne, where his research and teaching explore how law can be reimagined through storytelling, theatre, and acts of repair. His play Love and Reparation restages the Section 377 litigation in India, blending legal transcripts, personal memory, and poetic invention to tell a story of defiant queer love. Danish’s work has been cited by the Supreme Court of India in its landmark judgment decriminalising homosexuality, and has been recognised with the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia’s Early Career Researcher Prize and Midsumma’s Queer Playwriting Award. 

Cover Image: Teague Leigh, QPAS 2025

The Fugitive Gesture is part of a year-long suite of programs within Utp’s 2025 provocation – who is ready for another world considers this moment of collective grief, models of collective liberation and resistance to settler-colonialism.

PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, with venue partner, Bankstown Arts Centre.

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, the Neilson Foundation and City of Canterbury Bankstown.