Come and See

incisive and Unapologetic, provocative, the female gaze has no qualms about upsetting the status quo in its quest for recovery and transformation. Five women artists visually riff on this vital way of looking and expressing to record tales of the past that are in danger of being forgotten, and stories of the anomalous future we could soon come to inhabit. 

- AVANTIKA SHANKAR

WHAT DOES IT mean to look with the female gaze? Must one first be conscious of one’s femaleness? As the female gaze becomes a critical lens for viewing contemporary Indian art, we witness depictions of the female form engaged in feats of power and play, but also steeped in moments of solitude, despair and transformation. In the current art terrain, the female gaze is a tool for change and, as a result of women having always been othered, imagines a future in which humanity is just one part of a transformed ecosystem. To be a woman, one might say, is to know one’s place, and these artists are finding theirs at the helm of a renewed, progressive art landscape.

MANJOT KAUR 

Manjot Kaur was born in Ludhiana—equal parts industrial and agrarian—and has always felt a kinship with nature. “I would play with the sparrows that came into my verandah and try to imitate the sounds they made,” shares the artist, who now splits her time between Chandigarh and Vancouver. Kaur’s fascination with the natural world has remained a fixture in her practice, from her days as an art student in Chandigarh and throughout her explorations at various artist residencies in India, the Netherlands, Italy and the USA. “The Government College of Art in Chandigarh focused a lot on skill and making things aesthetically beautiful. That has remained an important part of my practice, but I am also drawn towards abstraction and making things unfamiliar,” she says. Kaur was especially inspired by the fertility goddess Lajja Gauri, who is often depicted as having a lotus for a head.