A portrait hangs quietly on the gallery wall—its palette a soft bruising of rose and dusk. A blurred figure dissolves into the textured background, her features washed away by light. This is Kuvalai Anthotypes by Krithika Sriram, printed not with ink, but with rose petal pigment. It is part of the group exhibition, Ladies Compartment, presented by Method (India) and Gallery Melike Bilir in Hamburg, as part of India Week Hamburg 2025. It gathers six Indian women artists whose work unpacks resilience and visibility in public spaces shaped by gender—using the metaphor of the Mumbai local’s women-only carriages.
Curator Sahil Arora, founder of Method, calls the show “a meditation on what it means to exist within systems of care and control, visibility, and silence.” Each of the 20 works on display feels like a window onto a moving train, capturing fleeting moments of connection, solitude, and survival. Shot across media—analog film, digital cameras, old phones, anthotypes, and video—the works are diverse yet cohesive. “We chose to showcase women photographed by women,” says Arora.
One such photographer is Shaheen Peer, whose sculptural self-portraits shift the focus from face to drape. Posing in saris against richly coloured studio walls, her work captures the tender tension between identity and concealment. “Colour plays a big role in my work, but not in a rigid or overly conceptual way,” she says. Another train of thought flows through Darshika Singh’s In A Single Thought—a meditative video that brings to light the invisible labour of women, the rhythm of domestic work, and the poetic gravity of repetition. Avani Rai, in contrast, turns her lens toward Women of Gurdaspur, drawing from her family’s Punjab roots. Her images, unflinching and intimate, echo generations of quiet endurance, illuminating not just the women in the frame but the histories they carry. Keerthana Kunnath brings an entirely different perspective—photographing female bodybuilders. Her images are arresting, not just for their physical intensity, but for the emotional depth. “Strength and softness are not opposing forces,” she says. “They can, and often do, exist side by side.”
Each artist contributes a distinct carriage of thought—yet together, they echo the layered camaraderie of Mumbai’s ladies compartments, introduced in 1907 to offer women a sense of safety in the city’s arteries of motion. As Arora reflects, “Each artist takes a different approach, just like a lot of ways of living co-exist in India.”
Ladies Compartment is more than a collection of artworks—it’s a living, breathing train of thought. The exhibition is set to travel to Delhi and Mumbai soon.