Ajit kumar

The Butchers & The Underhands What is the idea and connection between them The Butchers and The Underhands are two interconnected parts of the same system of power. The Butchers began with an examination of institutional power: the structures, organizations, and authorities that shape our lives, influence our decisions, and determine how resources, information, knowledge, and even our bodies are controlled. Each of the ten original Butchers represents a different institution or field of influence from finance, education, and media to medicine, energy, security, war... The main idea behind The Butchers was to explore how power operates through systems that often appear legitimate, necessary, or even beneficial, while concealing the mechanisms of exploitation and control beneath their surface. The butcher figure became a symbol of this relationship between power and its victims. It represents an authority that has the ability to decide, control, consume, and determine the fate of others. The raw flesh imagery reinforces this idea, connecting institutional power to the physical consequences of its decisions: the bodies, lives, and realities affected by these systems. The Underhands takes this investigation one step further. Because institutions do not operate by themselves. Power cannot maintain its position through structures and authority alone. It requires people, intermediaries, agents, enforcers, administrators, and functionaries to translate decisions into action. These are the hands through which power reaches everyday life. The Underhands emerged from this idea. They represent the individuals and forces operating within the machinery established by The Butchers - those who carry out orders, enforce rules, maintain structures, protect interests, and help systems of power reproduce themselves. They may not occupy the highest positions of authority, and they may not be the ones who make the fundamental decisions. Yet their participation is essential. Without these hands, the structures represented by The Butchers could not function in the same way. This also introduces a more complicated question: Where does responsibility lie? Is it only with those who hold power, or does responsibility also extend to those who knowingly participate in maintaining it? At what point does obedience become complicity? And how does a system continue to operate when responsibility is distributed across so many different hands that no one seems entirely accountable? Through these two interconnected collections, the project examines power from two perspectives: the institutions that establish and preserve it, and the agents through which it is implemented. The Butchers represent the structures of power. The Underhands represent the mechanisms that put that power into practice. Together, they form a larger narrative about institutional control, exploitation, obedience, and complicity- a system in which power is rarely exercised by a single authority, and rarely sustained without the participation of others. If you looking for more info about the structure , please check my pin Thank you for reading❤️🙏