We are honoured to share that the winner of the Genesis Imaging Award for FORMAT Festival 2025 is Sujata Setia, whose powerful and moving project A Thousand Cuts stood out to us among many exceptional submissions.
As part of this award, Sujata will receive £1000 credit for photographic or fine art printing/finishing services at Genesis.
Genesis had the pleasure of speaking with Sujata about her artistry and her aspirations for how the bursary will support her project:
Could you tell us more about your recent work and the themes you explore?
I am a UK-based Indian artist whose work sits at the intersection of photography, socially engaged art, and an inquiry into culture. With a Master’s in International Relations from King’s College London and a background in journalism, I combine traditional artistic interventions and photography to study abuse, cultural imperialism, and unarchived subaltern histories.
In addition to my artistic practice, I’ve contributed to education and advocacy, teaching ethical storytelling and photography earlier at EFTI School of Photography in Madrid, and currently working with organisations such as Shewise and WERESTART in the UK.
My project A Thousand Cuts investigates patterns of domestic abuse within South Asian culture. Through close collaboration with survivors, this interdisciplinary project employs qualitative research and a trauma-informed approach, ensuring an ethical, survivor-centric narrative.
I have borrowed the metaphorical meaning of the traditional form of torture – “Lingchi” to showcase the cyclical nature of domestic abuse in this work. The continuous act of chipping at the soul of the abused, is expressed by making cuts on the portrait of the participant. The paper used to print the portrait is a thin A4 sheet, depicting the fragility of her existence. The red colour underneath the portraits signifies not just martyrdom and strength but also the onset of a new beginning.
I have kept the project at a domestic scale, using resources available within the home as a metaphorical reflection of violence occurring within the human space. The final artwork is photographed in a very closed, tight crop so as to express a sense of suffocation and absence of room for movement.
My initial intent was to create a metaphorical “waiting room,” where strangers meet and talk to each other without any fear of judgement or hierarchies. An imaginary space where conversations around abusive lived experiences continue to happen. Where it is easy to come out. A room where you are heard, seen, understood and where you feel safe to leave your story behind.
We started by creating that room as a real space – a space in a church in Hounslow, UK. Many of us met there, several times over. We held hands and spoke at length. No one interjected the other. No one left the room midway.
I am deeply grateful to the UK-based charity Shewise, which facilitated my connection with the survivors and provided invaluable support by establishing appropriate mental health safeguards. Each survivor who generously agreed to participate in this project is navigating a unique stage of trauma, making it essential for Shewise and me, to ensure that our engagement does not leave their wounds bleeding.
These initial dialogues led to the creation of a vector of faith between myself and the participants in this project. We then moved on to private one-on-one conversations and me photographing each survivor individually with their consent and their complete control on the way they want to be “seen.” Once I printed the images, the survivor then selected the image she wanted me to start making the cuts on. The motifs made through these cuts are a metaphorical representation of the women’s own lived experiences. Here, I employ the technique of the South Asian art of paper cutting called Sanjhi Art.
Historically, Sanjhi artworks were created by the Hindu god Krishna’s female consorts to attract his attention, showcasing an inherent power imbalance between genders. I wanted to create these contemplations of not just abusive lived experiences but also an inquiry into culture.
Through individual narratives of the survivors, we see how coercive control involves regulating the minutiae of everyday life, including how women dress and do housework, whom they meet and talk to, and depriving them of or restricting their access to even the most basic necessities of life such as food, water and fresh air.
Also, through the act of making cuts on the survivor’s portrait, the artist embodies the entangled identities of the abuser and the abused. That helped me understand the perpetrator’s obsession with violence and destruction. There is rhythm in violence. A form of meditation, even.
This work is an effort to understand abuse from many different frames of references. The role of past in formulating narratives of the present and the future; locating the inter-relativity between childhood and adulthood.
The long-term intention is to bring narratives of abuse into public discourse, arts and human spaces. In that sense, this work is an invitation for an open dialogue that allows both the survivor and society at large to explore concepts such as trauma, suffering, cultural predispositions, gender and identity politics without sacrificing their own vulnerability or risking confrontation. By making physical cuts on the survivor’s portrait, the endeavour is to showcase the juxtaposition of many energies and realms of individual and systemic consciousnesses, in the act of normalising abuse. The focus is on narratives of the South Asian subject. One finds in there, a certain similitude of hegemonic masculinity and a history of colonisation that then helps us sketch out broad patterns that might provide useful lines of inquiry.
This series also studies the journey of abuse from the private, intimate space where violence occurs; to its place in the public domain, whether it be in terms of how the private reality is subverted; decorated in public or that initial disclosure process when the survivor breaks their silence and speaks out to family, friends, neighbours, colleagues or even absolute strangers. This photographic study draws on interviews with 21 South Asian women (it is an ongoing project) and analyses the interactional and emotional processes of the first public disclosure of their private reality.
How has your artistic journey evolved over time, and what inspires you most in your creative process?
My practice is evolving so rapidly that I sometimes struggle to define it – it resists being confined to any one description. But if there’s one constant, it’s that my work has always been deeply personal, often mirroring the shifts in my own life.
I began my journey in 2014, a few months after my daughter was born and I was diagnosed with depression. Photography became a way for me to process emotions I couldn’t yet articulate. My early work was utopian – fantastical, dreamlike portraits of families, children, and people consumed by love. Looking back, I realise I was curious about what a perfect childhood devoid of abuse, trauma and coercion would look like. So, I made images that were almost tyrannical in their depiction of superbness.
I lost my mother in May of 2019. I think losing the fulcrum of my existence in that sense, reformed my artistic expression. For an entire year, I struggled to express myself artistically. When I finally returned to image-making, I found myself drawn to stories of resilience. This led to Changing the Conversation, a series that began with photographing mothers from different walks of life but quickly evolved into a broader exploration of people with visible differences. I became interested in challenging binary constructs – beautiful/ugly, good/bad, able-bodied/disabled – especially as my daughter, growing up brown in a predominantly white school, began encountering societal beauty standards firsthand.
My most significant shift came with A Thousand Cuts. It was the first time I moved beyond photography as a standalone medium. Instead of relying solely on images, I incorporated artistic interventions – photography became the foundation, but the real work emerged through metaphor, layering, and alternative storytelling techniques. This interdisciplinary approach has reshaped my practice entirely, and going forward, I see my work continuing to break traditional boundaries, exploring social issues through immersive, multifaceted artistic expressions.
How do you plan to make use of the bursary to further your artistic practice? Are there any specific projects or goals you are excited about pursuing?
The Genesis Imaging bursary presents an incredible opportunity for me to push the boundaries of how A Thousand Cuts is preserved and presented. The artworks in this series are intentionally fragile – deliberately cut, torn, and layered to explore themes of trauma and resilience. However, this also creates challenges in framing and long-term preservation, as the interplay of shadow and light is integral to the work’s meaning.
With the bursary, I plan to collaborate with the expert team at Genesis Imaging to experiment with custom framing and display solutions that maintain the integrity of these delicate pieces. This will not only ensure the longevity of A Thousand Cuts but also inform the development of my upcoming project, which explores abuse narratives through the traditional Rajasthani artistic intervention of Kathputli (puppet-making).
In this new work, I aim to create immersive, multimodal pieces that integrate photography, and the sculptural aspect of Kathputli making. Understanding innovative framing and preservation techniques through Genesis Imaging will be invaluable in ensuring that these fragile, layered artworks retain their visual and conceptual integrity.
At a deeper level, this bursary also allows me to engage in a dialogue with the idea of the traditional “frame” itself. Much of my work focuses on subaltern voices – the unarchived human histories that have been silenced or forced into rigid societal constructs. Through this process, I am exploring how these voices can freely express themselves and carve out their own space, even while agreeing to exist within the constraints of a physical frame. It is almost metaphorical for me – the act of framing becomes a negotiation between structure and freedom, visibility and erasure.
What do you hope audiences take away from your work, and are there any messages or ideas you strive to communicate?
I’ve often said that I make work to create room for dialogue around issues, themes, and narratives that are otherwise shrouded in deep, historical silence. My starting point is always my daughter (she is 11 years old now). If she feels safe engaging with my work – without feeling confronted, coerced, or forced into a conversation – then I know the work has succeeded in creating a democratic space rather than an imposition for a wider audience.
I intentionally make works that are visually striking so that audiences can engage with them at multiple levels, on their own terms. If someone chooses to distance themselves from the lived experiences of the survivors in my work, they may still find comfort in seeing these as simply beautiful pieces of art. But for those willing to step beyond aesthetics, the work offers room for deeper reflection – perhaps even recognition. They might find echoes of their own stories within these narratives or discover new ways to make meaning of their own lives through the experiences of others.
As an artist, I am aware that there is no linear pathway between art and societal change. Transformation does not happen instantly, nor does it follow a straight road. But I create work with the faith that change is the cumulative outcome of many small steps, taken by many different people, at many different moments in time. If my work can be one of those steps – if it can shift even a single perspective or plant a question where there was once silence – then it has done its part.
Do you have any upcoming exhibitions or projects that you’d like to share?
A Thousand Cuts is scheduled to be exhibited at the Format Festival in Derby from 13th March through to 15th June. Simultaneously it will also be showing at Photo Frome in Somerset from 5th to 27th April and Photo London at Somerset House from 15th to 18th May. It is currently being shown at Chennai Photo Biennale in India and will go to Lishui Photography Festival in China in November.
Meanwhile I am working on several new projects and concepts. I have recently received a grant from Culture King’s (King’s College London) to translate academic research on the role of workplace for the Embroidery Women Artisans in Kashmir into a lens-based interdisciplinary work. I am working tirelessly alongside Dr. Kamini Gupta and the artisan on the realisation of this work.
Simultaneously, I am laying the groundwork for a lens-based project in which I will collaborate with adult survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) to explore and document lived experiences, long-term consequences, and the systemic barriers to disclosure and support.
You can find more of Sujata’s work on her:
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