A Thousand Cuts
by Sujata Setia
Derived from the ancient Asian form of torture – “Lingchi”, “A Thousand Cuts” is a photographic study of patterns of domestic abuse in the South Asian community.
Program Schedule
- October 15 – Preview
- October 16 to 19 – ON VIEW
- October 17 – Cuts to Connections: Exploring Identity and Recovery | Workshop by Sujata Setia
- October 19 – Breaking the Silence: Conversations on Domestic Abuse
Each portrait features physical cuts, reflecting past trauma and the process of reclaiming power. The close, tightly cropped images evoke a sense of suffocation, mirroring the lack of freedom in abusive environments. The patterns that emerge on the portraits symbolize both submission and resistance, forming an internal dialogue for the survivor and a conversation with the viewer.
“कितनी गिरह?”
(How many more Knots?)
I married 2 people in my life. They were very similar to each other. I got divorced from both of them for the same reason. I married my 1st ex because he was a relative of my father and I married the 2nd ex because of honour. I lived with the 1st for 14 years and 8 months. And I lived with the second ex for 1 year but it is like 14 years.
My first exes uncle harassed me. Look how same this life story is. Two husbands. Same kind of husbands. My second husband agreed with my cousin, who is my sister’s husband… to harass me. My cousin started to threat me. He said “ your ex husband sent me your naked pictures. Come sleep with me.” I cant go into details or I will go into a panic attack.
My cousin contacted my brother and my brother and my father came to kill me. He said “You talk to another person who is not your husband or brother or father.”
I have a lot of bad experiences in my life. I tried killing myself three times, because they pushed me to kill myself. My brother locked me in a room for three months and they would just come, give me food and go. I lost my memory in those three months. My mother took me out one day but my brother told me to go find food in the garbage because I dishonoured their family.
All of the family was against me. We were 7 daughters and 4 sons. Anyone who came in through the door, my father would give our hand to them in marriage.
“पंख” (Pinion)
I was 21. Everyone was pressurising me to marry and I kept rejecting offers and it bothered everyone. So I just said yes. I was too much into my studies so I couldn’t be bothered.
Within a month or two of our marriage he started forcing me to have a kid, It became too much. So I asked him if I could study further because that was my plan. Suddenly it looked like everyone in his family froze. They started complaining about the fee and how they couldn’t afford to pay it. So I decided to do a job but they refused to that as well. “Not possible they said. What will people say that we got an educated daughter in law because we want to make her work?” I started learning to drive. But my husband discouraged and ridiculed me by saying “at least clear the theory. I dont think you are capable of that as well.” I am not going to lie, he had completely shattered my confidence. I felt like I was capable of doing nothing. I was not allowed to make any friends. If someone came home also and I tried talking to someone, I would be told later not to contact anyone. I was not allowed to go out anywhere. I once wore clothes of my choice so I was immediately asked to change on the pretext that “what will people say! To the. Kind of clothes you are wearing.” It were such little and petty things… the minutiae of everyday life … the control. That I used to say to myself “I am overthinking.” Also, when you have not grown up witnessing such coercion then you dont even recognise the red flags.
“अवरोध की उड़ान”
(Fenced Flight)
Let me tell you that I was a star before marriage. I earned a degree in finance and in my family no woman had this degree ever and I had a job. I was the youngest daughter so I was the envy of my brothers and other siblings.
When I got married, within 15 days I realised this marriage was really wrong for me. But when I was getting married, my sister told me “if anything wrong happens to you… please don’t tell anyone. Because I am fixing your marriage. So just let me know, dont tell anyone else.” So I kept quiet and I thought maybe marriages are like that because I have seen men back home are quite strict. So I kept quiet.
He started threatening me that if I say anything to anyone I will be deported from the country. And back home I have an aging father… he asked me to think about all of that.
He used to give me some money but he would keep counting.
Then I gave birth to my daughter. It was a difficult delivery. No one came to the hospital and when I got home my husband mistreated me. Around 2014, he stopped me from using the phone. I wanted to take pills so I could not get pregnant again but he stopped me. He would physically and verbally abuse me. He would lock me in the room and slap me and hit me with a towel.
He would treat me like… back home you know “a goat. Who always gave birth to 8-9 children and eat food and that’s it.”
My children suffered a lot of emotional abuse too. Ive been through all forms of abuse – emotional, verbal, physical, sexual. You name it.
“अंतिम संस्कार”
(Culture Death)
I didn’t believe until now that it is my story too even though I started to witness the violence from inside her womb.
The only vivid childhood memories that I have are of watching her being dragged by her hair around the house in front of my cousins. I remember hiding behind the door and witnessing all of it. Or was I standing in the room? I am not so sure. Where were my brothers at that time? I cannot recollect. I think I was three-years-old. That year somehow stays with me. That was also the year I remember sleeping in my parents bed alone. It was afternoon. I wasn’t in my nappies… no. I think by that time I had just grown out of my nappies. My cousin. I remember him on me… no one else was there in the room.
She wasn’t allowed to do anything except for bringing us up the way he wanted us to be brought up. She would cook and clean. He had two sisters, each of whose one son lived with us. They would boss her around as well and enjoy watching her being beaten up.
Many nights he would return at early hours of the morning drunk. I remember his head inside the toilet seat. His body hanging like a wet cloth, loosely attached to the scruff of his neck.
I am 41 now, I still carry the trauma of my childhood like an invisible limb. My mother has died. Her perpetrators remain alive. Not just the man. Neither all those men or women. Abuse exists within our culture, our genetic predisposition.. the gendered narratives that are fed to us.
”कटि पतंग”
(Unconfined or Unhinged)
In my head I created a calendar, in which every second day… a mishap happened. Life kept going on.
But the biggest damage was how possessive he was. What I wore. What I did. Whom I spoke with. Where did I go. He dictated everything. He told me what colour to wear and what not to wear.
If I even went to my parents’ home he would call a 100 times.
Everything I did was monitored.
If I wore good clothes… he would just tear the clothes.
I used to love wearing black colour but because of him black colour permanently got adorned in my life because he wouldn’t let me wear another colour.
He would speak lowly of me in front of other people to stifle my confidence.
I bore two daughters from this marriage. The abuse continued and this started impacting my children.
My youngest daughter became very quiet. Slowly she started losing her hair and she ended up with alopecia.
Of course amidst all of this abuse life goes on. We eat food. We go on family holidays. We meet people… life has a way of staying normal amidst all its abnormality.
“एक अदभुत परिंदा”
(Phoenix)
One of the recurring dreams I have had is that I am in a zone of war with two children and I am hiding to protect myself and my children. So I was always foreseeing danger. I would see my house becoming my jail and on the other side of it I could see panthers walking around. My husband was my first cousin. My mother-in-law came from a very abusive marriage herself and she chose to get divorce and work and become financially independent and support her children. The first seven years of our marriage was good. We were actually in love. But she didn’t like that. She perhaps had an issue with couples being happy. It could be any couple, including her children. So in that sense if I look back at my story, I see her as the perpetrator, but the irony is that at one point she was a victim herself. There were days when I would stuff a cloth in my mouth while crying so my children couldn’t hear me because it was so painful. He would threaten me that if I left him he would make life hell for my entire family. Even if I would go back home at times to my parents, he would call incessantly or show up drunk at the door. So I remember once after a similar incident, I went back home with the kids and saw all the windows were smashed and there were shards of glass everywhere. I remember the trauma my children went through. With all the challenges we’ve had… it’s almost like you get buried and then you rise again. It’s like the phoenix, you rise like the phoenix.
“मिट्टी के दायरे”
(Circles in Sand)
I remember as a kid, we were left outside to play. There was a lot of construction ongoing in our neighbourhood. Everywhere I looked, I saw a mountain of sand and cement.
I would pick a pebble from the street and make circles in sand. Was it because I was seeking the shelter of her womb everywhere? Did her womb protect me? Or was it the perception of protection that became my understanding for the rest of my life?
My mother’s womb. It’s from there that I started witnessing the violence. I remember the sound the cemented floor made when she was dragged by her hair through it. I was three. I have grown up learning that to be the only sound of music…
“मुझसे मुलाकात”
(Finding Me)
Once during our fights related to him keeping control on all my money, he started speaking badly about my mother and my upbringing so I started recording everything he was saying on my phone. I decided I will send the recording to my family. I went with my phone to my room. He came to the room, snatched my phone and held my neck tightly and said “women like you are worth killing. Let me see who will save you today.”
I pushed him and ran towards the door.
He ran after me and said “no one will protect you.”
I was so lost in that moment. I couldn’t even fathom where the elevator was.
I was crying so loudly. Like one cries when someone has died.
Just beneath our apartment there was a cash and carry shop. I barged into it. I begged the owner of the shop to help me call my family back in my country. He hid me in the store and said he will come after attending the customers.
I wasn’t able to breathe.
That man helped me call my mother. My mother asked me to call the police.
That shop owner helped me call the police.
Police came. They saw the marks around my neck and arrested him.
Meanwhile back home his family went over to my parents’ home.
When my father got to know of what I had done… he harassed my mother and hit her.
My mother said to me “what is happening to me… let it happen. Don’t take it on your soul. You protect your life. I wasn’t able to help you earlier but I cannot let you die like this. Don’t return to that man for my sake.”
“अल्ला कि गाँए” (God’s Cow)
It was my father and his elder brother’s family that lived together back home in my country. This is the time of my childhood. My cousin, who was the son of my uncle. I was about 5 to 6 years old. He started sexually abusing me. As a child I did not know what was going on but he would always ask me not to tell anyone. He was about 18-19 years old at that time. Our family then moved to London. And in our community it was felt that children who grow up in London and go out to malls etc, get spoilt so they should be married off to a man from our home country. So my mother’s younger sister convinced my father to get me married off to a man who was around 16 years older than me. I was 15 and still in secondary school. After the marriage, I came to London and he stayed back to do his paper work and he was meant to follow me to the UK once his visa came through. However during that time our family found out that the father of my groom was sexually abusing his own daughters. So my family got me divorced. However, this brought shame to my family. There was this typical scenario where concerns came up about what will society say about having a divorced daughter sitting at home. What will our relatives say! So when my cousin, who had abused me in my childhood came forward to ask for my hand in marriage… I wasn’t ambitious. I was not career oriented. I was a simple, quiet girl who always did what her family asked of her. I was “Allah’s cow.”
“सपनों कि साज़िश” (Conspiracy of Dreams)
I have a very good childhood. And my father was very hardworking. He earns for us and he gave us the gift no one can give me like that education. I am a masters from Pakistan. And I was very sheltered. I was not like, I have to go out and work. So it was all my in head that one day I will be like married and I’ll find my prince and all that.
Yeah, boy was treated as an investment? That they will look after them in their old ages because daughter has to leave one day. So that was all in my thinking and it was all in my mother head because she don’t know anything about other than this box and I was also don’t know.
So the marriage to this man happened after I see him once in the presence of everyone. He was Danish national living in England.
But after reaching here he start changing he like keep distancing from me. His mother was verbally abusive. He was also verbally abusive. I couldn’t understand because I’m very new to England. And I thought maybe people are like this. But the planning behind the marriage was to run his brother food business. So it just came to me one night when I just refused to work without payment. So he beat me harshly. And he said, he just brought me here to run his brother’s business. So it was a fraud marriage.
It took me five months to leave this marriage. because that day my ex -husband went to deliver rice or something to his brother’s shop and he forgot in rush to close the door and I found that the door opened and I ran away.
“क़ैद-ए-क़फ़स” (Bastille)
My husband from the very beginning told me that I will not keep you with me. I got married to you only because my parents insisted. From the onset itself he kept forcing me to return to India. I kept hoping he will fix his behaviour but he didn’t. One day he finally threw me out of the house. For the 8-9 months I lived with my husband, he mentally tortured me to such an unimaginable extant. He would not give me a penny. I wasn’t register at the surgery. I wasn’t even given food. He would come home bring his non veg food eat it and he wouldn’t bring anything vegetarian for me. So I would go hungry for days. He never let me get out of the house.. Once I fell seriously ill but he ignored me and did not take me to the doctor. He would torture me so much. I begged him to keep me with him. I begged him to not throw me out of the house. A middle person got us married. I saw him for the first time on the day of our marriage. I was 33 when I got married. One year after my brother got married and brought a wife home. For several years my parents looked for the right man for me but they never found someone who was good enough. People known to us would ask my father why I had been sitting at home for so many years but my gather would always say that he would not get his daughter married until he found the right man. Maybe it was in my destiny to marry this man which is why my father chose him for me. I was obedient. Wherever my father told me to marry, I got married.
“मेरी हद्द”
(The premise of my existence)
My parents brought me up with a lot of love. I finished my studies and they I became a school teacher. Someone brought a wedding proposal and the family liked me. The boy came. When I saw him I started to cry because he was much older than me. He was 22 years older. But my family told me “Its ok. You will have a lavish life. If he is older then he will obviously love and respect you.”
We got married and I came here to UK. For a year he kept me well and then I gave birth to twins. So once the kids were born my mother in law started to taunt me and a lot of fights started to happen. It was like, they wanted children and that I gave birth to so my job was done.
I remember the words “The machine to produce children has arrive now make as many as you can.”
They kept my and the kids passports with them. I was scared. They would not allow me to feed my milk to my own children. They would snatch the kids from my arms.
In a few years he filed for divorce. He tried to get full custody of the children because his family knew that if the kids came to me even for a few days then he would have to pay me some allowance.
He threatened my kids that if they say that they want to stay with their mother then their father would make sure to never let them see me.
So the children said in court that they want to stay with their father. He finally got the custody of the children.
Since then, I get to see my children twice a week for a few hours each.
“काग़ज़ का फ़ूल”
(Paper Flower)
He was divorced and 11 years older than me. I tried to resist. I had just graduated. But because my family was going through a bad time at that time. My father was critically ill. We were struggling financially and you know that social pressure. So my mum said “look this is a very good option and you won’t get this again. You are getting to go to London.” As a girl in south asian background, you are always raised to be submissive. You cannot have your own say. “A good girl always says yes.” Then he went back to London and I joined him in 2013. Thing didn’t seem right. He wanted children. He gave me an app to check my ovulation days. After or before that I was nothing to him. He tried so much to get me pregnant. It was like a job for me and it was a horrific job. Then I had my daughter. Not to mention the abuse from my in-laws it was horrific they used to control every single move of my life. I used to cry all the time and my husband was enabling all of it. But now I know, it was not their behaviour but the lack of love and empathy from my husband that made me so unhappy but back then I always thought he loved me a lot because that’s what he would say to me. I decided to live with him for the sake of my kids meanwhile I worked on myself. I learnt driving. I applied for a job. He dissuaded me all the time. He psychologically abused me. He used to tap my phone, my calls. We had cameras everywhere in the house. I felt like I was in a prison.
“सर पे छत”
(A place to call home)
I wouldn’t say we were a typical Asian family. My dad kind of isolated us. We weren’t even allowed to speak our language. It was only English all the time. And my dad, he worked in like all good jobs like first he worked at the embassy then he worked at the bank. I remember how violent my mum and my parents relationship was my dad would get angry at my mum sometimes and he’d hurt her. I think I was very, very little. I remember him, like, silently banging her head on a wall and the blood staying. But on the outside, when you look at our family, we were well dressed, we had nice things, my dad spoke well, we were all like educated well, so on the outside, we all looked really good and our family looked really nice. When I was 16 my mother refused to support me any further. I didn’t really have a place of my own And I was either living with friends or boyfriends. My mom treated my brother very differently to the way she treated me and my sister. Our needs as a girl is not important. If I want to study, that’s not important. I mean, if my brother wants to study, yeah, that’s important. And so I think that’s why when I’m in these abusive relationships with these men, it’s their needs first. I always remember my mum working. She’d go food shopping, I’d go and help her. My brother wouldn’t help, my dad wouldn’t help. So that’s the kind of life I was brought up in.
“मोम का पुतला” (Statue)
“I am not able to understand anything. Nothing. I am not even getting any dreams. I don’t feel like doing anything. I don’t feel like doing anything. I am not feeling like doing anything. I am not feeling angry with anyone. I am not able to understand what is happening. I am not able to understand what to do and what not to do. I am neither feeling sad nor happy, I just keep living like this. I am not able to understand anything right now. I am not able to understand anything. I am saying the same thing, I am not able to think of anything. The doctor has given me medicine. I am not able to feel like doing anything. I am not able to understand anything. I am saying this again and again.”
“अतीत का भविष्य”
(Makings of past)
I was young when I had some growth on my chest. People started talking. Some said I had drunk some potion. People turned our life into hell. A marriage offer came from a man in UK who was undergoing treatment for schizophrenia. My mother said “this is your way out.”
I took it. I was 16. When I reached London I was taken to the hospital to meet him. When he was not on medication. He was violent. When he was on medication. His family was violent.
Amidst my abuse, my children were born.
One day I escaped with my children and I went and sat in the middle of the road knowingly that I could be killed here but I said no, I’m not going back to that house because that family will kill me anyway. Traffic was stopped. Police came but did not help. I was sent back. My children grew up watching the abuse. My son is 50 years old now. He’s decided to not have children. He doesn’t want to carry his father’s blood line forward.
But you know while I was going through all of this abuse, I started to volunteer for women’s organisations… to empower other women.I had nobody there for me but they have me. So I tell them:
Learn English. Get your driving license. Become independent. Don’t rely on anybody. I encourage them. No one encouraged me. I had to do it myself but now I am there for other women.