“Forging solidarities across differences”
Art critic, cultural theorist, curator Nancy Adajania says kinetic impulses guide the works assembled in the CSMVS exhibition.
How did you approach the idea of feminism that informs this show?
When Sabyasachi Mukherjee invited me to curate an exhibition on women artists, I mulled over the various ways in which this mandate could be met. I did not want the exhibition to be devoted to a few star artists, which is the default position of the Indian art world.
Since I had the opportunity to curate in what Mukherjee has famously described as a “people’s museum”, I proposed an exhibition format which contextualises the work of five generations of Indian women artists by taking the 1980s, which marked the first phase of the Indian women’s movement, as the starting point. The women’s movement was galvanised in the 1970s with the Mathura rape case and gathered further momentum through successful protests for legal reform in the 1980s.
I refer here to a book that I read in my early 20s and which has been very important to me: Radha Kumar’s The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800–1990 (1993), which historicised the Indian women’s movement across the 19th and 20th centuries.
How did you make your selection?
The exhibition takes the form of an intergenerational mapping. The oldest artist represented is Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020) and the youngest is Al-qawi Nanavati (born 1995). Woman is as Woman Does does not treat gender as a static identity. These artists belong to different classes, ethnicities, and caste groups. Those born to privilege are shown alongside those of Dalit or Adivasi origin. Artists who have concentrated on studio practice appear here, along with those who produce zines and graphic novels, collaborate with subaltern artists, local communities, farmers, activists, and grandmothers.
The trigger for Woman is as Woman Does is the women’s movement in India, as it happened in the 1980s. I was in school then and remember this brutally recurrent front-page headline: “Woman burnt alive by in-laws”. Woman was being constructed as a juridical subject in those years. The war over women’s freedoms—their very right to exist—was being fought in the courtrooms and streets, in the newspapers and classrooms.
Nilima Sheikh’s revisiting of her own iconic 1984 series against dowry killings, When Champa Grew Up, bears witness to how crimes against women continue unabated today, at an increased pitch of violence. Alongside, I flag the impulse towards articulating and building solidarities, which has been a key theme in the women’s movement, as evidenced here in Sheba Chhachhi’s photographs, which foreground the empathy shared by women protesters across the class divide.
Could you expand on the theme of intersectional and cross-generational mapping?
These themes are transmuted in the work of younger-generation artists navigating new political landscapes. For Nilima Sheikh and Sheba Chhachhi’s generation, I would argue, gender was a category of resistance that required special affirmation because it was not considered a legitimate issue, even by the Left. But for Gen X and the millennials, gender is interwoven with questions of caste (Ranjeeta Kumari), regional aspiration (Aqui Thami), livelihood and ecology (Gram Art Collective and Ita Mehrotra), ethnicity, linguistic diversity, and freedom of speech (Arshi Ahmadzai and Baaraan Ijlal). And an artist of Adivasi heritage
demonstrates solidarity with a Dalit cause (Durgabai Vyam).
While most of the participating artists identify as “she/ her”, Sharmistha Ray no longer identifies as a “woman” and defines herself as non-binary. In the 1980s, the Indian women’s movement, challenged by the immensity of crimes against women, focussed on legal redress while deferring questions of sexuality.
Alternating between moments of consensus and dissensus, the movement has never been a monolithic entity. The Marathi and Hindi words for a movement or agitation— chalval, khalbali, or andolan— are infinitely more active and sensorially rich than their anodyne English counterpart. It is these kinetic impulses that guide the works assembled here.
Viewers will have different takeaways from the show. If you had to think of one thing, what would you like your audience to see?
Viewers have spent up to three hours on this show. There has been an incredible response, not only from women, but also from men and boys. As the late Kamla Bhasin used to say: “Men of quality are not afraid of equality.”
The one thing I would want viewers to take away from this show is the importance of adjacencies, of forging solidarities across differences. This show pays homage to the pioneer of intersectional feminist politics, Kamla Bhasin, who urged us to see the gender issue alongside the struggles of Dalits, Adivasis, and workers. As her azaadi slogans remind us, we shall wrest our freedom from all forms of oppression, not by playing victims but by “talking freely, singing loudly and dancing madly”. its milestones. Featuring artists across five generations, the exhibition can be said to be a definitive documentation of the postcolonial women’s movement. During a walkthrough, Adajania says: “I wanted to show feminism in India from an Indian perspective. I kept the selection simple and direct, not ornate. While describing milestones, I felt it needed something direct and declamatory; senior artists in the same neighbourhood as Gen X or Gen Z. It is important to have a diverse conversation.”
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director, CSMVS, said at the inauguration: “The exhibition is our tribute to women’s power, which highlights transformative changes in varied sociocultural, political, and economic spheres.” The power is expressed through not just mounted paintings but also black-and-white photographs, placed in such a way as to throw a shadow over a particular painting; a television screen that projects a film; installations, objects, magazines, mixed media and music.
KEEP WALKING
The works are in distinctly different styles, with contemporary art mixed with traditional tribal designs. By highlighting subjects such as dowry, atrocities on Dalits, marginalisation of tribal people, the show asks the viewer to go back in time and see the present through the lens of the past and also look ahead to the future of
the feminist movement in India.
Nilima Sheikh’s acclaimed series, When Champa Grew Up (1984), serves as an introduction. This antidowry art was accompanied by protest songs in Gujarati when it was first exhibited: one of the songs is displayed here, stressing the continuing afterlife of the still-relevant work. Sheba Chhachhi’s photo placards capture the moments in the 1980s when women activists protested rape, dowry deaths, and female infanticide. Chhachhi was a founder-member of the women’s group Jagori, along with pioneering activists Kamla Bhasin and Abha Bhaiya. Her work on feminist theatre activism is placed in close proximity to Nilima Sheikh’s anti-dowry song, with each lending resonance to the other.
One of Baaraan Ijlal and Moonis Ijlal’s carved wooden sculptures shows a march of people, whom Adajania
interprets as a “servile army” or “a group of refugees.” She says of the work: “Keep walking, they seem to say. Keep defying the order of the tyrants.” Young artist Ita Mehrotra uses a dark scroll to etch the account of Sudesha, a leader of the Chipko movement. For too long, says Adajania, Chipko was associated with men. “We hear Sudesha’s voice honest and wise—channelled through the imagination of a younger-generation feminist.”
Excerpts from the documentaries The Books We Made (2016) by Anupama Chandra and Uma Tanuku and Unlimited Girls (2002) by Paromita Vohra are screened on a panel in the hall. The first records the establishment of Kali, India’s first feminist press, and the latter is an experimental documentary using the device of a feminist chatroom to produce a multilogue between women of differing ideologies. For Adajania, both films underline the importance of friendships that sustained the feminist movement.
FREED FROM STRICTURES
Although every art piece is a draw, Aqui Thami’s installation of tiny baskets with dried plants pouring out of them has a magnetic pull. Aqui Thami, who comes from the northeastern region, pays homage to the bojus (grandmothers) with the plants they had gifted her. Thami says that she draws energy from the bojus, who are the keepers of holistic knowledge. Thami’s zines from the Sister Library she established in Mumbai are also displayed. Established in 2019, it is one of South Asia’s first community-owned and run feminist libraries.
Then there are women engaged in traditional storytelling: Durgabai Vyam, from the Jangarh style of art, describes Adivasi heritage through
SHARMISTHA RAY’S
her work. Ranjeeta Kumari’s video, Gaali Geet, shows a group of women from Bihar singing playful songs on love and relationships. Adajania says: “The gaali geet embodies female gaze, female agency and licence emancipated from patriarchal social structures.” Speech bubbles pop up on the walls. “So much of our traditional knowledge is oral. To bring the intimacy of the oral account, I used speech bubbles,” she says.
A striking black-and-white photograph of Sharmistha Ray taken by Bikramjit Bose hangs from the ceiling, greeting viewers as they enter the second part of the exhibition housed in the Premchand Roychand Gallery. Sharmistha Ray, an artist and activist who rejects gender binaries, posed for this photograph in 2015 for a feature #Ungender, meant to break stereotypes and stigmas associated with the non-binary and queer community.
Sosa Joseph’s Pieta is a painting in the signature style of the Kochibased artist. Also used in the exhibition’s
SHEBA CHHACHHI’S photo placards.
poster, the painting is inspired by a newspaper article on an Adivasi woman whose son was killed by extremist forces. Sosa Joseph’s Mary is maniacal in her grief but she does not ask for pity. She is “Everywoman demanding justice for her martyred son,” says Adajania.
The works of Zarina Hashmi, Purvai Rai and Gargi Raina are placed side by side. All of them describe the turbulent times the artists went through when they lost their home or went into exile. “How do you use the language of abstraction to talk about politics?” asks Adajania. Nilima Sheikh’s scroll, My Hometown (2009), draws on the traumas of Kashmir. A rare early work of Anju Dodiya, Portrait of a Girl, is selected to show how the “artist portrays freedom and its lack, strength and its opposite, melancholia and the darker notes of life through the mirror that is the self.” Shantibai from Bastar creates a fascinating series of caricatures using dots in the traditional style that connect people, places, and things. Asked what art does to her, Shantibai says: “I feel joy.” m