I grew up hearing stories of demonesses, women and fluid beings who refused consent over their bodies and over their people’s lands. Called Dakini, witch, wild woman, ogress, they spoke without permission, laughed with a full throat, loved outside the lines. For this, they were punished, and they tried to kill her and shrink her into a cautionary tale.

They thought they won. But she was never dead. Only resting. Fermenting. Regerminating.

The land remembers her defiance. She lives on in stone and soil, in the breath between grief and laughter, in grandmother’s shawl, in recipes, in protest songs, in chosen kin who love quietly, and in the intuition of our gut. She survives in joy that outlives shame, in dreams, desires, and imaginations that their systems cannot reach.

Despite every law, doctrine, and punishment meant to erase us, we kept on living inside the very tales woven from their insecurities.

Sheelasha is part of a growing ecosystem of artists, curators, researchers, designers, activists, archivists, and cultural workers who wear multiple hats and are initiating and sustaining practices beyond formal institutions. Alongside others, she navigates systems shaped by care, ancestral knowledge, and structural difference. Her work goes beyond making or curating; it is about holding space, resisting erasure, and imagining new ways of being in relation. She is also committed to reclaiming how stories are shared, bringing them to international platforms with dignity, complexity, and self-determination to shift conversations and redefine terms of engagement.