Prarthna Singh and Snigdha Poonam
2024: Notes from a Generation
TARQ, Mumbai

With the 18th Lok Sabha elections, 2024 has been a significant year for India. Nearly two-fifths of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens are under the age of 25—a significant fraction of the voting pool. Photographer Prarthna Singh and writer Snigdha Poonam, two artists concerned with precarious political trends in India, spent five years traversing towns and cities they have lived in, in order to interview young people between the last elections and the most recent ones. The question they asked was: how do young people—those with the potential to play a crucial role in the future of the country—think and feel?

The exhibition, curated by Pune-based editor and writer Skye Arundhati Thomas, consisted of 26 portraits. The subjects in the photos were from various religious, class, and regional backgrounds, some dressed casually, others photographed in their work attire. The uniformity of the portraits (neutral backdrop, steady gaze of the subjects into the camera lens) made the portraits reminiscent of government documentation; these could easily have been pictures used for voting forms or identity card applications.