Vaneesha Krishnasamy is not your average creative with a penchant for capturing pretty photographs and stringing flowery words together. She's an emotive storyteller at heart—one who uses her platforms to shed light on social justice
topics that matter, albeit inadequately discussed.
Last year, she produced a
three-minute video titled 'A piece to my racially and socially privileged friends'. It went viral for its thought-provoking sentiments calling out racism and inequity in Malaysia. Earlier this year, she showcased a portraiture series titled 'I'm
Every Woman' for the Exposure+ Photo exhibition at GMBB KL. The project reimagines a diverse range of everyday Dravidian women from Malaysia as women of the past, to spotlight those often denied by society and to celebrate
their existence and joy in spite of it.
Scroll through her
Instagram page and you'll find a treasure trove of photographs and videos celebrating marginalised bodies of different skin tones, shapes, sizes, genders and sexualities, being their most authentic selves. Many of them come from communities
you wouldn't typically see represented in traditional media—mainly Tamil and Indian, dark-skinned, plus-size, disabled, and chronically-ill bodies.
The 28-year-old herself exists in the intersections of four of those
communities, as she would come to embrace along her quest of finding herself. It was that journey of self-discovery that led to her calling as a multimedia producer, journalist and photographer today.