Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Museum of Sacred Art, Belgium, present ‘Shakti: Fair & Fierce’, an exhibition that puts out what women want and think through 100-plus multi-layered works by 55 women artists currently working in varied genres and living in different parts of India. On till March 31, it will then travel to Belgium.
Curated by Sushma K Bahl, with inputs from Meghna Vyas Arora, the paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, installations, animation, and embroideries here provide a counterpoint to mainstream culture, goading women to resist misogynistic practices and not accept the culture of silence and impunity.
For example, “fair isn’t about fairness in terms of the colour of skin, it’s about justice, kindness, generosity and nurturing nature of women,” says Bahl setting the tone of the event.The exhibition is divided into three segments — ‘Voice and Vision’, which focuses on women’s views and their response to the male gaze, ‘Myth and Mystique’, and the third section, ‘Threading Life’, which includes the work of people from marginalised communities.
Their artworks liberate them from their confined roles and inhibited thoughts. The connection between the urban and the rural, the contemporary and traditional societies comes through in artworks embroidered on hand-spun cotton.
Embroidering women’s worlds
Embroidery art plays a cathartic role in women’s lives, especially for the socially deprived and those silenced. As the exhibition shows, through this, one can peep into a woman’s life, be it her inner or outer world. Showing how male-dominated society still exists, Radha Gomaty features women busy with their household work, while men sleep in comfort as if they exist in another world altogether! Shobha Broota’s work, which combines her painterly skills and geometric markings, enjoined with thread, wool, net, knitting and embroidery, foregrounds a new aesthetic dimension.
Seema Kohli’s paintings on untreated canvas embellished with silk, thread, beads and sequins are the outcome of her work with weavers and embroiderers on the outskirts of the capital. Sangeeta Gupta’s work with traditional block makers and printers in Rajasthan to paint hand-spun khadi with organic indigo is also striking.
The embroiderer featured in Arpana Caur’s large painting with Warli folk motifs weaves the thread of her life in lines. The compositions in these works focus on the dualities of day and night, white and black, life and death, happiness and sorrow, fair and fierce.
Imagery-speak
Keerti Pooja’s paintings in watercolour on wasli paper chronicle the experiences of her journey from home onto the wider stage. The uncertainties of places and people she encounters are captured as innumerable belongings stacked and tied up in bundles that women are known to carry on their heads and in their minds.
Sujata Bajaj’s and Brinda Miller’s works remind one of rangoli or kolam (floor painting) ritual traditions. An embodiment of the transformative power and cyclic nature of life, Sujata’s and Brinda’s abstract compositions adorn cave-like entangled sketches that open up their art to multiple interpretations. Reflective of nature and humanity in unity, the paintings are enriched with calligraphic notations.
Multimedia exhibits
The digital works at the exhibition are captivating. In ‘Lumena’, Charuvi Agrawal brings alive the concept of Kundalini in the serpentine figure of Shakti, as a 10-foot tall multi-media sculptural installation. Delhi-based artist Richa Navani has taken up the difficult task of bringing out the inner contradictions of the human mind using a language of geometric patterns and symbols. Looking deeper into Navani’s work, one can see that she is addressing gender politics, existential crisis, and sexuality. “I am more inclined towards sustainable art with the idea of equity. My work ‘Chakuli’ (which means bird) describes how one can have a house, but not a home without a feminine figure,” she says.