When Bengaluru artist Indu Antony decided to start a dialogue about the much-ignored issue of safety of women in public spaces, she ditched the usual course of putting up an exhibition that portrayed violence against women on canvas. Instead, she invited her friend—the flamboyant 76-year-old Cecilia—to become her live model as she went about her ongoing public art project titled Cecilia’ed. The duo created a buzz by hosting reopening ceremonies on streets that were considered unsafe for women.
In another street of the Garden City, they gathered women and marched into bars where men frequent and women hesitate to step in. These unorthodox ways of generating dialogue caught the attention of the men they wanted to address.
Elaborating on the process, Antony says, “When a celebrity visits a public space, the crowd gathers. I transformed Cecilia into a celebrity and conducted a ‘street reopening ceremony’ to mobilise a crowd so that we could talk to them about women safety-related issues and spread awareness.” Not stopping at just a talk, Antony also opened a helpline number where people could reach out to Cecilia and discuss their problems, and she would discuss the solution with local NGOs.
Launch of an open bar was also part of the project. “Can a woman lie down in a park all by herself at any time she wants, or have an affordable drink at the nearby local bar? No! To bring a change, I hosted an open bar where a lot of women came over to the shady bars we picked. The men were taken aback but did notice that it was a space that women could also visit. This was our attempt to normalise certain matters,” says the artist. Cecilia and Antony have been friends for four years now and their thoughts about feminism, gender bias and stereotypes made them come together for this art project.
Cecilia, meanwhile, became the talk of the town for her swag and bold moves. Riding this wave, Antony took up outreach programmes in the form of workshops in several wards, printed pamphlets, published zines, by creating WhatsApp groups and a website to get people talking about women’s safety. Not surprisingly, Antony-Cecilia’s one-year project has received the Public Art Grant from the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) for its innovative approach to an age-old problem.