I did not like the victim blaming that came along with her rape,” says artist Nimisha Bhanot referring to Jyoti Singh, the December 16, 2012 gang-rape victim. “This,” she continues, “coupled with (RSS chief) Mohan Bhagwat’s comment about ‘Bharat’ becoming ‘India’ really pushed me to paint liberated women that break patriarchal
expectations by embracing both Eastern and Western influences.”
The paintings she refers to “critiques the societal role and perception of South Asian women from a bicultural lens”, and beautifully so, as they depict women who are not only breaking stereotypes, but doing so with sheer confidence by staring back into the viewer’s eyes.
She says the rape “hit me really hard” because the victim was her age and was just innocently riding the bus. “It honestly could have been me, or any other girl riding the bus at night, and that is terrifying. The victim blaming that followed was defining her as someone un-Indian because she had a male friend, was out late at night and that’s just not what ‘good Indian girls’ do. I think it’s very unfair that many people in our community judge a woman’s purity against her likeness to a national identity,” Bhanot says.
So intending to make a point against such “unrealistic standards”, the Indo-Canadian artist started exploring the concept of pin-up in 2012 while in her fourth year at university. She says she did a figure painting called ‘Badass Indian Cop’, where she portrayed a sexy Indian police officer smoking a cigarette.
“I wanted to sexually liberate the Indian woman in a way that is so common in North American culture, to reflect the contrasting portrayals that diasporic South Asian women face every day. I call them ‘badass’ because the women I portray are not only breaking rules and expectations set on them by society, but are also looking back and confronting the viewer,” the alumnus of OCAD University, Toronto, Canada, tells Metrolife.
Titled ‘Badass Indian Pinups’ and ‘Badass Bahus’, the series of paintings challenge the traditional Indian expectations in marriage from the perspective of the ideal bicultural world. She says that while her ‘Badass Brides’ depicts interfaith brides (Indo-Chinese, Indo-African, Indo-Canadian), her ‘Badass Bahus’ uses pin-up style composition to portray bahus (daughter-in-laws) that use personal style to reflect a bicultural identity which accepts and rejects aspects of South Asian and North American culture.
The works depict South Asian women — whether they are ironing out clothes, sweeping, playing poker at a kitty party or serving breakfast — giving a modern twist on their traditional portrayal, while also flaunting an attitude.
“Scale of the paintings and gaze of the subject are meant to confront the traditional Indian patriarchal views on a woman’s freedom to a marriage of her choice. Models are photographed and then transformed into brides adorned in mehendi, jewellery and bridal attire through my imagination,” she writes on her website.
She says things like “looking back, talking back, and standing up for yourself” are all very “badass to me coming from a background where individuality is often repressed in favour of filial piety and social respect”.
“Growing up was about being good enough for parents and society, then about being good enough for marriage and your in-laws; but I don’t look at my life that way. A woman’s life isn’t all about getting married and her individuality doesn’t lessen after she gets married,” she says.
“A woman doesn’t become someone’s property and lose her voice after she gets married. And she surely doesn’t owe anything to the expectations of her in-laws, society or anyone else. Marriage is traditionally seen as a defining moment in the South Asian woman’s life and I’ve been exploring this idea all though my 20s because people around me are getting married and I’m living through it,” she adds.