'Feminine Force 2022': An ode to feminine energy, strength

In Princess Pea’s art projects, the subject wears an oversized anime head sculpted from clay.

In this work by Mainaz Bano, Lord Krishna is flanked by gopis wearing sleeveless dresses and heels.

In Adittee Garg’s latest series of sculptures Dream & Desire, ‘her women’ are always looking up, soaking up the moment with eyes closed or dreaming with eyes wide open and chin resting on the hand. They are calm, confident and slender, a stark contrast to the hair that drifts chaotically as if hit by a wild wind. Her women wish for a different world, a world free of rules and prejudices.

They are somewhat an ode to the feminine energy, popularly described as free-flowing, expressive, and creative as against the rigid and predictable masculine energy. That’s why they are part of an online art showcase that is celebrating Women’s History Month all through March. Called ‘Feminine Force 2022’, the show has been curated by Apparao Galleries, with outlets in Chennai and Delhi.

Photographs of about 100 paintings by nine women artists are being posted daily in batches on the Instagram page of Apparao Galleries. You can also scroll through sculptures made in studios and seen in ancient temples and archaeological sites in India. A similar curation featuring female painters like Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpita Singh and Nasrin Mahmoodi can be viewed on the Instagram page of The Art Platform India, which has also lined up the works of male artists from Raja Ravi Varma to K C S Paniker, M Reddappa Naidu, and Sunil Das. From works in ink, mixed media and watercolours to prints, etchings and photographs, there is diversity.

DHonSaturday quizzed the curator and artists about their interpretation of the feminine energy in their art and how that has evolved over the decades as women gain agency.

It is about confidence, not gender

Delhi-based Adittee feels the feminine energy is gender-agnostic but given her lived reality as a woman, she can translate that in her work best. But admittedly, ‘her women’ have changed since she left a 9 to 5 job to become a sculpting artist 19 years ago, moulding figures in clay and casting them in bronze. “Earlier, they used to be shy, bald and heavy as if burdened with life, and they would exhibit closed body gestures. Today, my women sit freely, and they have wild hair, beautiful lips, sexy bodies, and they look light,” she says. There is a bit of Adittee in all ‘her women’ or feminine works.

Princess Pea, an anonymous painter and performance artist from Gurugram, tells us similar things. In her art projects, she wears an oversized anime head sculpted from clay. It is her alter-ego, her space to be, her sanctuary from the unhealthy expectations around beauty, body image and desires that society throws at women. “Initially, she represented women’s issues but now my alter-ego represents any cause she is part of,” says the artist.

The Instagram show has curated portraits of her alter-ego dressed in various textiles and poses, painted on silk. Quiz her about the use of green hair, eyes and pea-like globules, she first says it was an artistic call and then shares a story, “When I made the head from clay initially, I saw a shoot sprout of it. It was from a pea.”

In Mainaz Bano’s body of work, themes of women empowerment are subtle. In Evolution 1, the Lucknow-based visual artist has done miniature drawings on the Indo-Roman trade that once flourished in Arikamedu, an archaeological site four kilometres from Puducherry. “Whether it was growing cotton or weaving at home, or making pots, women played important role in the trade in those days,” she talks of the mixed media series made using gold, silver, varnish and ink.

In one of her paintings from the 21st Century Ideology series, Lord Krishna is flanked by gopis wearing sleeveless dresses and heels. “Women are not defined by their clothes but their ambition,” Mainaz analyses the work.

A lot of veteran artist Sakti Burman’s paintings eulogise the beauty of women. Some are part of the curation. “Very often, artists don’t think much or ask a lot of questions about what they are painting. Painting feminine works comes naturally to me,” he says.

“Male artists mostly look at the beauty of women and praise them. Though some like Reddappa Naidu have also depicted their strength, their shakti,” says gallerist and curator Sharan Apparao. And she has seen female artists make use of sacred symbols like ‘bindu’ or ‘yoni’ in such works. She did not draw up any hard rules to curate these works or follow the textbook definition of feminine energy. “I picked the art that sang to my heart. We wanted to eulogise women and their strong and positive side. I see feminine energy as the confidence that comes from self-sufficiency,” she signs off.

Follow the show on apparaogalleriesindia, and theartplatformindia on Instagram.

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