Writer Sharan Dhaliwal was scrolling on Instagram when she encountered this image by an unknown Indian artist. “I was brought up in an Indian family to believe that sex is shameful and so are our bodies,” she writes for Elephant’s This Artwork Changed my Life column. “I was taught that women are incubators of the seed: told … not to feel pleasure ourselves”—and this work stopped her in her tracks. “It was an important revelation in my understanding of who I am. I understood that the history of India is laden with queer love. Seeing two women pleasuring each other openly at a picnic, with a look of smugness on their faces, gave me a new confidence.” Read the full story here.
