HYDERABAD: Celebrating International Women’s Day, the Hyderabad Art Society and Telangana Artists’ Forum collectively organised an art exhibition at the Salar Jung museum on Tuesday. The exhibition aimed at recognising feminine expressions and providing space to budding women artists. More than 140 participants from across the country, including states such as Jammu, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Kerala, and Karnataka, exhibited their work.
Surabhi Vani Devi, MLC and founder of Sri Venkateswara College of Arts presided as chief guest of the event. The other guests included Dr N Kavita Daryani Rao, Vice Chancellor, JNAFAU; MV Ramana Reddy, President, Hyderabad Arts Society; Anuradha Reddy, co-convener, INTACH and Nagender Reddy, Director, Salar Jung museum.
Kavita Rao congratulated all the participants and encouraged them to continue expressing themselves through their art. She said, “It is good to see women talking about matters close to their hearts. However, It should not be taken for granted, as it has taken a very long time for women to be able to express themselves. After almost 200 years and three waves of feminism, they have been able to communicate their feelings freely. At this exhibition, women have presented what they feel very strongly about, whether it is maternal love or their thoughts about nature. They should be encouraged because if we are to leave a legacy of art, which is to be seen and understood by future generations, half of humanity not voicing their opinions is not what we seek to achieve.”
Participants manifested myriad thoughts and complex emotions on their canvases. Pallavi, displaying her artwork for the first time in Hyderabad, showcased her work which is “an ode to the Sanskrit sloka: asato ma sadgamaya/tamaso ma jyotirgamaya/mrtyorma amrutam gamaya. A woman meditates and chants the sloka as she forms a chakra of her energy shielding her from all the chaos of the outside world.”
Another young artist, Rajni D said that she does not work with vibrant colours. She makes her own palette and likes to express it in bold strokes. One could get a sense of her idea in just one look at the painting, “Women are the architects of society. The world around them tries to shape them in a certain way but as they go through different stages of life, they end up nurturing and structuring the whole world around them,” said the budding artist.
An interesting melange of colours, techniques and mediums was visible in the work of A. Vekuva. Her painting, ‘flowers over thorns’ demonstrated the complexities that rule the emotions of women and their inability to express themselves in their desired manner.
Congratulating women who came forward to express their ideas at the exhibition, the chief guest, Surabhi Vani said that while many restrictions were posed upon women in her own days, it is overwhelming to see women coming forward to express themselves. She said, “In our days, dancing on the stage, singing, reading novels or any form of public performance was prohibited for girls. There was no question of painting a picture in a studio. We could not do nude or semi-nude paintings.”
She further added that pursuing painting even as a hobby required a bit of hard work. “Even the material that we used for art was rare. We used to get it from Bombay. Canvas was not available in the market, so we had to prepare it ourselves. We went to Azam Jahi Mill, got the cloth and prepared the canvas, which would, at times, not come out nicely. The painting would look pixelated. Now there is lavish material available and acrylic is a good medium as you have the privilege to make changes in the painting. With oil colours, you have to wait for the painting to dry. My idea is that one should finish their painting in one go, whether it takes five or six hours. In oil paintings, there is a limitation with that and one might lose interest in the middle of the process,” she said.
“Last year, we got an enormous response for the exhibition but this year we had to be selective. Each one of the 148 artists was excellent. Hyderabad Art Society has always been encouraging women in art and culture. There are so many representations of what women feel and they have painted from their soul. There are aesthetical pieces as well as plenty of experimental works,” said MV Ramana Reddy.