Farmer Oppressed

Farmer Oppressed is a painful image of the unspoken hardship agricultural people go through—a strong critique of institutionalised cruelty, exploitation, and neglect.

The image revolves around a devastated visage created with great accuracy. The words are absent yet the eyes are wide with dread, confusion, or perhaps protest. Boots hang above him, weighing menacingly, symbolic of authority, policy, and indifference that subjugate the backbone of rural work.

Although the farmer has a sickle, a sign of his work and identity, it is useless in the fight against systematic cruelty. The image intensifies his feelings and the boots, so distilling the circumstances into a symbolic conflict between repression and nourishment.

This essay covers not only the present farmer suicides, displacement, and protest movements but also a more general historical trend of rural marginalisation. Black and white, power and resistance, life and loss, the monochromatic block print medium stresses the urgency and duality of this fight.

In Farmer Oppressed, I challenge the audience with the question: how long can a civilisation survive if it constantly subjugates those who feed it? I want to honour the resilience of farmers.