Artist Divya Suvarna painted her masterpiece only recently. No, it was not a larger than life wall painting, but the Eye of Sauron on the stomach of an eight-month pregnant woman.
It was another day for the artist, till Sangeeta Krishnan approached her with a quirky request. She wanted her baby bump to be converted into a round canvas.
Divya, who works with HootBox Creative Works, a Mumbai-based design firm, was initially scared as she had never attempted anything like this before but when she saw how comfortable Sangeeta was with it, her fears disappeared. And the next one hour was spent painting and sketching memories. “This was definitely a first for me. I was scared initially as my art has shades of grey. But she was so supportive and let my creativity run wild,” she says.
And of course, Sangeeta collected memories of a lifetime.
“After the morning sickness subsided, I just wanted to have fun with it. So I started approaching friends, who were artists. I didn’t tell her what design I wanted, I let her experiment on the round canvas,” says Sangeeta, who is due in two weeks and still up for another session. “This is definitely a keep sake,” she says.
And like Sangeeta, there are a lot of women out there, who have shed the garb of coyness and have embraced their bodies in all forms. They are no more seen hiding their bump under layers and layers of clothing.
If some are opting for colours, others are not shying away from the lens. And the western influence plays a major role.
When marketing professional Shreya Krishnan saw pictures of Shakira, international singer and songwriter, posing boldly with her bump, she knew she wanted to do something similar. And in her third trimester, she hired professional photographers and let them take candid shots of her in her house. The protruding bare belly took the centrestage. It was her way of chronicling her baby’s birth. The pictures will be part of a scrap book, which will also have pictures of the delivery day, the first step and several such moments.
A new genre of art?
While mommies to be are leaving no stone unturned, photographers and artists alike are discovering a new genre; one that involves the unborn. Photographers Nishant Rajkumar and Vindaya Murthy, who also did Shreya’s photoshoot, have decided to take their photography to the next level.
Six months before the delivery, every 20th of the month, they shoot the mother in her in her house. At the end, they compress the entire session in a five-minute video. “It beautifully shows the growth of the baby inside the womb. You actually see the bump growing,” says Vindaya.
The prices of these videos go as high as a lakh. Taking a cue from the new age wedding videography, the five minute video can have exotic locations, background music and can also be scripted, all depending on the customer’s preferences.
Pregnant not patient
The tech-savvy mommy of 2012 has evolved to a fearless being, not scared to push her boundaries. One such mother is dancer and wife of Lucia fame director Pavan Kumar, Sowmya Jaganmurthy. She was eight months pregnant when she took to the stage and gave a tantalising dance performance. This was in 2013 and the audience was awestruck. The performance was called Fearless and was an angry protest against rape. “I am a dancer and my body is used to it. If you make up your mind, it is not difficult. You are pregnant not a patient,” she says. She adds that people around her were more scared than her. But the fears vanished when the theatre erupted in an applause; the response was a tearjerker says Sowmya.
m saloni@newindianexpress.com