About Ciara Talisa Pillay

Ciara Talisa Pillay is a queer Indian artist from Durban. She is based in Johannesburg and has been since 2017, where she is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at the university of Witwatersrand. She works with mediums including photography, video, printmaking, and sculpture/installation. She further plans to complete a degree in sexology in the hopes to advance the structures of an inclusive sexual education in South Africa through her art. It is this plight around which her current creative practice revolves – the omission of queer sexual education for queer youth in South Africa, the portrayal of queer bodies in pornography, and the narratives surrounding queer Indian bodies and identities through an exploration of historical Indian erotic art in the modern age. Herein she creates counternarratives emerging from historical metanarratives regarding erotic art and pornography on sex, identities, and sexuality in the spheres of pre- and post-colonialism. She further creates conversations around current sexual education systems in South Africa and globally.