POM-POMS is a project that starts from an investigation into the world of ‘Indian Premiere League‘ in New Delhi. During the period of residence in the city, I tried to immerse myself in the heart of ‘IPL‘, actively attending games at the stadium, to personally experience all those inputs that the perfect machine of “cricketainement” offers, match after match, to the spectators.

Colors, video cameras, trumpets, cheerleaders on the sideline enhance and hypnotize the crowd, which responds regularly with excited shouts and dances that go beyond the dynamics of the game and of organized supporters in the Western sense.

The IPL is moving on a horizontal surface of superficiality, where perhaps reside instincts true and authentic, just because they can be easily shared: a bubble of fun with its own unwritten code but recognized by all. A place where one random shot in the stands may possibly change your life, or at least the evening.

The IPL offers people a truth, an abnormal normality made of celebrations, dances and fizzy drinks. This is the context of my project, one that tries to calibrate its gaze with that of the people.

Starting from the simplicity and the “sincerity” which cheerleaders (or an idea of them) were implanted in Indian cricket, with preference given to aesthetics and winking instead of acrobatics, my work imagines an Indian antrophological background, visualized through an ‘”Indianization” of iconographical and textual of covers of essays on the American history and spirit of cheerleading practice.