Curated by Nancy Adajania, the exhibition–on display at CSMVS Museum in Mumbai–focuses on the female artistic labour of “doing”
From pivotal points in history such as the Mathura rape case of the 1970s to the Chipko Movement of the 1980s and the most recent Shaheen Bagh protests of 2020 in New Delhi, women have always been at the forefront of the socio-political cultural landscape of India. However, “women” can hardly be treated as a static gender as diversity is an exigent condition. So when curator and cultural theorist Nancy Adajania had the tall task of putting together an exhibition comprising "women" artists as a part of the centenary year of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum, she chose to include a multitude of voices in the form of “an inter-generational mapping of 27 women artists who have engaged with postcolonial India’s raging political and cultural problems,” that culminates into Woman Is As Woman Does, on till 16 October.
Capturing significant moments in history
Spread across both the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation and the Premchand Roychand Gallery of the CSMVS Museum, the show also features contributions by activists and filmmakers, in addition to the 27. “I chose to begin this show with a significant moment in the Indian women’s movement, which was galvanised during the 1970s with the Mathura rape case, and gathered further momentum through successful protests for legal reform in the 1980s. Integral to the context of this exhibition is the Chipko Andolan and various initiatives to safeguard individual liberties. Women have been at the forefront of many of these movements and it is this sense of agency that I wish to emphasise through the title of my show–Woman Is As Woman Does, which includes the works of five generations of Indian women artists,” says Adajania.
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Al-Qawi Nanavati, Emotional Experiments I, 2021, Weaving, crochet and paint on canvas
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Art by Ranjita Kumari
When approached by CSMVS Museum director general Sabyasachi Mukherjee to curate a show on women artists, Adajania consciously steered clear of mounting one that featured only prominent singular names and widened her scope to include broader perspectives to capture the depth and breadth of the women’s movement.
Radha Kumar’s The History of Doing based on Indian women’s movement across the 19th and 20th centuries inspired the title as the verb “doing,” and the act of it, symbolised the core of the stories that this exhibition tells. Diverse mediums and formats such as oils, watercolours, photo-placards, videos, installations, comic scroll pamphlets brought out by various women’s groups, protest songs, zines, Instagram albums, posters and even recipes, come together to effectively narrate multiple stories.
“WOMEN HAVE BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF MANY MOVEMENTS AND IT IS THIS SENSE OF AGENCY THAT I WISH TO EMPHASISE THROUGH THE TITLE OF MY SHOW.”
Nancy Adajania
Spanning time, geography, gender and politics
“Apart from studio practice, this exhibition portrays collaborative encounters between artists of privilege and homemakers, farmers and subaltern artists. My emphasis is on an intersectional feminist politics. For instance, I have foregrounded the solidarity between members of two historically vulnerable groups–the adivasis and the Dalits by showing Durgabai Vyam’s work. Durgabai, an artist of Pardhan Gond heritage, illustrated Bhimayana, the biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, in her own inimitable manner by experimenting with the Western convention of boxed-in panels. Importantly, having faced discrimination herself, she could identify with Dr Ambedkar’s life story and the humiliations that Dalit communities suffer. And we have a confident portrait of the artist Sharmistha Ray, who uses the pronouns ‘they/them’. Ray no longer identifies as a ‘woman’ but as non-binary,” explains Adajania. Bhojpuri, Magahi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali, Urdu and English converge in this exhibition that sees Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020) as the oldest and Al-Qawi Nanavati (born 1995) being the youngest artists whose works feature in it.
Artist and photographer Sheba Chhachhi, who was one of the founders of the women’s group Jagori along with Kamla Bhasin and Abha Bhaiya, has her photo-placards showing how women went to the streets to protest against issues such as dowry deaths, rape and female infanticide in the 1980s and so does an anti-dowry song composed by a women’s group in Gujarat. Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai’s Pages from My Blood Book (Kabul), 2021, painted on coarse, untreated canvas, “helps soak blood or what the artist lyrically calls 'the red travelling every month'”. Elements in her work make it particularly poignant as it resonates with the now-Germany-based Ahmadzai’s inability to feel “at home” due to the views against dissent in both India, where she was born, and Afghanistan, where her family is from. And these are just a few of the works featured in the exhibition.
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Al-Qawi Nanavati, A Collaboration with Mumtaz, 2020, embroidery and hand sanitiser image transfer on linen
“Could this have been an exhibition devoted to a few stars in the firmament? That is the default format of the art world, which I wished to avoid. I have spent nearly three decades in the art world and as someone trained in the social sciences and film-making, I am always saddened by how the art world emphasises the cult of the individual artist over the interplay between the individual and the collective, from which all culture is truly produced,” writes Adajania in her curatorial note. From the scope of focusing on the “act of doing” or labour, Woman Is As Woman Does succeeds in doing a service towards explaining the female gaze that is a sum of more than just our singular lives.
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