Hoovyaru Belasidare | Who Grew the Flowers?

Preethi G is a member of Sadhana Mahila Sangha and works as an office assistant for the organization. She began her cultural journey as a performer in the theatre play Hasivu-Kanasu in 2022, and through her work with Sadhana discovered her talent for drawing and storytelling. She has since explored art forms including shadow art, puppetry, video editing, and animation, and is currently directing her first independent documentary with fellow Sadhana member Gayathri.

Varun Kurtkoti is a filmmaker, community artist, and arts educator who divides his time between Bangalore and Dharwad, Karnataka. His practice includes animation, filmmaking, theatre, ethnography, and designing arts-based pedagogies, and he facilitates arts-based capacity building and community development for young people and workers across Karnataka. He holds an MA in Community Arts & Applied Anthropology from Goldsmiths University, London, and a Diploma in Art & Design from Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology.

Deepak Srinivasan is a Bangalore-based artist, media practitioner, and design educator with twenty years of practice in performing arts, radio, film, community media, design, and pedagogy, converging as transdisciplinary practice. His work in community media and social design has spanned youth groups, special children’s groups, school dropouts, and special communities. His interests include gender, ecology, creative education design, urban space design, and knowledge system practices, with a focus on modernity’s intersections with historic process, oral histories, and collective memory.

Gowri Vijayakumar is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. Her research and teaching focus on gender, sexuality, labor, and politics. She is author of the award-winning book At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis and co-editor of Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries. She has conducted research with organizations working with sex workers, garment workers, street vendors, and transgender communities in Bangalore.