Presented by the NGMA Delhi and The Museum of Sacred Art, Belgium, the show brings together over 100 works by around 55 women artists from different parts of the country
Shakti, the force at the core of the cosmic energy that animates all life, is personified as the divine feminine. She is revered as ardhangini (wife/better-half), grih lakshmi (goddess of the household), Saraswati (the epitome of knowledge and wisdom), Durga (warrior goddess), Ardhnarishwar (composite androgynous divinity), and in numerous other avatars (incarnations) in the Indian tradition. Yet, in real life, she is misconstrued as feeble and subservient, and often subjected to rigid gender constructs, discrimination, sexual exploitation, marginalisation, and violence — at home and at workplaces — even in this day and age. A new art show, presented by the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Delhi, and the Museum of Sacred Art, Belgium, celebrates Shakti in all its myriad forms. Titled ‘Shakti: Fair & Fierce,’ the show is on at the NGMA till March 31, and will later travel to Belgium.
The show, which celebrates feminine creativity, includes over 100 artworks by 55 odd female artists from across India. In varied genres and styles, the works of women artists, sieved through an inclusive feminine gaze, reflect on their struggles, triumphs, dreams, desires and ambitions. No longer confined to restrictive social norms, today’s women engage with issues of larger interest to society. They use their creativity for self-expression, dialogue, bonding, and solidarity. The show takes their work, generally taken less seriously or forgotten by recorded history, to the attention of the public, collectors, gallerists and media in India and abroad. Interestingly, in their works, the women artists also champion the dispossessed.
Baring feminine soul and spirit
Most works on display are part of the collection of the Museum of Sacred Art; some of them were made especially for the project. The creative trajectory bares feminine soul and spirit. In an interface of the divine with the demonic, sacred with secular, local with global, or pleasing with provocative, these works take the viewer beyond the pre-mediated male gaze and engage with society as a cohesive whole. They question the deep-rooted gender bias, morality policing, enforced dress codes and sexual abuse of women. They resist the persistent denial of gender justice and substantive inequality deeply entrenched in patriarchal societies.
Aparna Caur, Day and Night, Oil on canvas, 2011
The women’s creative expanse straddles a diverse medium: paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and artefacts in terracotta, stone, wood, metal, mixed-media and more. There are also installations besides animation, digital, video, pop art and embroideries. The artists include both the renowned ones who have studied art as well as the emerging ones who are self-taught, artists who come from cities as well as those hailing from far-off regions of subaltern India.
The feminine gaze
There is a painting that blends mythology with narratives about a woman’s body, her sexuality, emotions, and life experiences. It articulates a feminine sense of pride in her physical attributes, rejecting attempts at demeaning, objectification, and exploitation of her sexuality and sensuality, as projected not only in antiquities from prehistoric to medieval era but also in contemporary art and popular media. Shifting the gaze to the modern era, one encounters the late Amrita Sher-Gil, the leading avant-garde early 20th-century Indian woman artist. The track she laid is being taken forward by many women artists, a selection of whom are featured in the exhibition. The feminist art offers a broad overview of contemporary women’s voices and views. We meet women caught in the shackles of forceful divinity; in other avatars, she is a generous mother or a graceful woman or a multi-tasker.
An artwork by Radha Gomaty, Kochi-based multimedia artist, poet and filmmaker known for scripting the documentary film, ‘The 18th Elephant- 3 Monologues’, which won seven major National and International awards in 2004.
Besides managing home and hearth, today’s women can be seen to take on responsibilities in every sphere of life — politics, science, technology, academia, or social welfare — with equal élan. The multi-media works of artists like Arpana Caur, Kanchan Chander, Seema Kohli and Radha Gomaty illustrate the feminist vision, which is as bold as it’s beautiful.
Breaking the gender barrier
Kanchan Chander’s kitsch sculpture as a female torso, inspired by Frida Kahlo, shifts the focus away from the male gaze which perceives the female body merely as a sight of appropriation. There is the divine goddess Kali, all set to take on the wrongdoers with a vengeance. ‘She’ adorns a mythical body in Seema Kohli’s multi-media work themed around creation and procreation as Hiranyagarbha or the golden womb. Embodying both the divine and the demonic, the feminine body appears inundated with embryonic imagery in her paintings. The cow-bull painted sculpture in her work has the hump of a bull and the udders of a cow, reinforcing the concept of Ardhnarishwar in an inclusive society inhabited by people of varied sexual orientations.
The construct of the divine cow dismantles the gender barrier. It speaks for an aligned harmony between man-woman, yin-yang, positive-negative, magic and malice and fair-fierce polarity. The female body, be it clothed or unclothed, takes centre stage in masterly etchings, drawings, paintings and sculptures centred on issues of sexuality. Somewhat lonesome and brooding, her simplistic form appears self-absorbed as in the multiple media deity figured by Radha Gomaty. Incorporating a touch of sensuousness along with myth, fantasy, and anthroposophy, the woman in Arpana Caur’s art takes on a lonesome appearance despite the vibrant colours it adorns. The psychological insights of a tempered feminist protagonist resisting her physical objectification come alive in her paintings. The fair gender, subjected to several outdated binds, appears to resist being sidelined. The tell-tale signs of oppression are underlined in the hybrid bodies of fluid creatures that appear in Gomaty’s drawings.
The tree of life
There are photographic works that encapsulate women’s stories in strife-torn regions. In her works, Saadiya Kochar traces Kashmiri women’s struggles against violence. Her photographs of women raise a chorus against the atrocities inflicted upon them by a conservative society. Captured in a series of stills titled ‘Fire Within and Without,’ there are women lighting up the candles to bring some cheer into their own and others’ gloomy lives. The lives and struggles of rural Kashmiri women, caught in these digital photographs, are the outcome of Saadiya’s sojourns through the Himalayan state for research over the last few years.
The work, inspired by Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi’s poem titled Aurat (Woman), shows the women’s ability to carry on with their daily life and rituals, such as working in the fields, accompanied by their children, holding on to their kangris (small pots filled with lighted charcoal) to stay warm and save themselves from the biting cold and the ongoing violence. Boldly withstanding the flames of the socio-economic-cultural conflict raging around, women can be seen seeking equity and peace for all. The series critiques the image of a woman as a mere object of sexual desire. It calls for a focus on her psychological self, taking the discourse beyond her body and womb, sensuality and sexuality.
In the works that are part of the show, Shakti is composed and compassionate, and not a mere celestial damsel. She is a woman who interrogates unjust subjugation and misogynist attitudes, in the family and society. The tree of life, a metaphor for regeneration, appears as a recurring leitmotif in the works of these women artists, which also reflect on issues of displacement.
(The show has been curated by Sushma K Bahl, with inputs from Meghna Vyas Arora)
