I have often insisted that women’s aesthetics and sensibilities have a shared trajectory largely because they have a shared journey. This week for me was a reiteration of this at two shows, one Diversions and the other Mysterious Terracotta. I will have you know that braving the heat was an absolutely Herculean effort and there were moments when I thought I would melt into a big puddle on the floor! But it was worth it for I wasn’t disappointed in the art.
Diversions with Sarla Chandra, Durga Kainthola, Bharti Singh and Saba Hasan is a show that I will remember for the synergy despite the diverse styles and thematic content. Space constraints notwithstanding, the judiciously selected works managed to make their presence felt and left a lingering after-taste like good chocolate. Senior artist Sarla Chandra is going through a very active and fertile phase and the detailed work using silver foil made for some fabulously intricate works on paper. Bharti’s clever usage of theatre masks and whorls of fingerprints extending right onto the frames made for some very interesting viewing.
Saba’s colour palette is understated and elegant. She is happy to experiment and mix and match myriad mediums to conjure works that are edgy and explore the dimensions of the abstract to take it further every time. Durga opted to comment on the Nirbhaya case with a performance-based presentation using a theatre artist, Nandini Hoon. The installation, in which the performance was set, contextualised the performance and was able to define the socio-political stance of the piece.
Women comprise half, if not the majority of the population, in spite of female infanticide, yet they are a miniscule minority as far as practicing artists go. The answer does not lie in the traditional paradigm used in other areas that is lack of literacy and awareness. Art, unlike education is not traditionally denied to women. If anything, it is their forte. And generations of contemporary women artists have all attempted to find an idiom that is rooted in their indigenous ethos, yet totally modern in both form and content. In both the shows, this came across loud and clear.
The other show that I absolutely loved was Mysterious Terracotta. One of the reasons was that my work featured in it, but that is only a miniscule part. The show was the culmination of the workshop of women artists held last month and the element of unpredictability that is the hallmark of terracotta, took my breath away. What were pieces of often indescribable lumps of clay resulted in works worthy of an international quality show. Curated by Rajan Shripad Fulari, artists like Gogi Saroj Pal, Anupam Sud, Latika Katt, Kavita Nayar, Ela Mukherjee, Kanchan Chander, Nupur Kundu, Manisha Gawade, Durga Kainthola, Shivani Aggarwal, Shruti Chandra Gupta, Vinita Karim, Pooja Iranna, Seema Kohli, Arpana Caur and yours truly were part of it. The “earth factor” is a strange pull and it came across well in this show. The large NIV gallery spaces lend itself amazingly well for the lyrical and light display of the works.
One of the galleries also featured a solo show by the same name of the terracotta man Rahul Modak. The show was exquisitely mounted and some of the works featured were stuff legends are made of. Young Modak more than deserves the break (and also for jheloing us women at the workshop!) but it would have been much better for him if his show could have had some separate demarcation setting it apart from the women’s show. He must have worked for a long time for this show and his effort should have got solo credit.
Despite the heat, it was heartening to note the number of people who came for the opening of the shows — of course the result was that the air conditioners packed up. What could have been a truly enjoyable evening, ended up in heat puddles! The hosts Aruna and Shaji Mathew, who are the backbone of the NIV initiative, tried valiantly to be the wonderful hosts they are. These shows are truly international quality and deserve even higher visibility, of course in better weather.
In folk and tribal societies as well, the continuation of art and craft is part of a woman’s work as they are apparent repositories of culture. The arts are handed down from generation to generation through women. This is especially true in pre-industrial societies. Throughout the history of India, the arts have been interwoven with societal survival. Women have and continue to play a vital role in the understanding of the human ingenious modus and comprise repositories of cultural legacy and are the forerunners of gradual and if needed, radical change. From the pastoral hinterlands and regional spread of diverse, yet interlinked folk and tribal art forms to the escalating, lively metropolises of the modern Bharat, female practitioners and artists glean the inter-nexus of the traditional and contemporary synthesis of the visual arts.
Serious studies need to be undertaken to delve into the roots of “creation” by women, to understand feminine inspiration on its own terms, and not as an also-ran of contemporary Indian art, for it possesses its distinctiveness, history, philosophy and indulgence that reaches far beyond compensating for another sensibility. The dichotomy, which has until present been constructed between art and craft, has deflected from congruence of the female receptivity towards art and the creative principle.
For in the case of women, art and craft are not separate entities, and the collective consciousness merges with that of the individual to bring out universal concerns. It becomes the unifying code within the art historical practice where upon the hitherto failure to acknowledge the pivotal constituent and contribution by women artists of all definitions has been and shall continue to be undermined.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi @yahoo.com