Arundhati Bhan in Conversation with Aparna Roy Baliga
In this quote from a dialogue between the Bengali artists Gauri Bhanja and Abanindranath Tagore, the former asks one of the leading art pedagogues of her time why women can’t aspire to be great artists. Bhanja’s powerful question serves as a useful guide to understand the relevance of a new show on at Akar Prakar, New Delhi, titled Of Spaces of Their Own, which braids together the histories of a selection of women artists in 20th-century India, meticulously providing subtle introductions to their larger oeuvres. The show examines modernism, the emergence of a new nation-state, and the equivalences between women and formal art practice. It pits popular names, such as Amrita Sher-Gil, Meera Mukherjee and Zarina Hashmi, against lesser-known ones, like Kiran Barua, Leela Mukherjee and Reba Hore, to present glimpses of a diverse range of practices. Arundhati Bhan of Critical Collective speaks to co-curator Aparna Roy Baliga to find out more.
Arundhati Bhan (AB): What drove your selection of artists for this show? Was the line-up inspired by your doctoral dissertation? Were you looking to focus on lesser-known female art practitioners?
Aparna Roy Baliga (ARB): When I started my undergraduate education at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, I noticed how we did not have a single female teacher. I did not come across a single text written by a female artist, or any classes nor discussions on feminism and women in art. But things changed when I moved to M.S. University, Baroda, for my graduate education. The coursework had a greater focus on female discourses and a solid curriculum taught by women. I went on to do a masters and PhD, where I researched more on the pedagogy of women artists in pre- and post-independence India. This eventually culminated in the book, Transcending the Glass Case: The Women Artists of Early 20th Century Bengal and the Gendered Indigenous Modernism, released in 2021. These interests have also shaped the content and curation of this exhibition.
AB: We see quite a range in the works of these artists -- from representational and figurative art to abstractionism. There is also work across different mediums - painting, sculpture, prints. What shaped the inclusion of this kind of diversity?
ARB: The ideas of art and art practice are often extremely limiting. Colonial and Eurocentric discourses on Indian art and aesthetics have not helped the cause either. When I was curating this exhibition, I wanted to introduce art that encompasses all forms, methods and techniques from different phases of the 20th century. I also wanted to address geographies, with representation from different regions and schools in the country. So, there is a Devyani Krishna from the Delhi Shilpa Chakra, along with an Ambika Dhurandhar from the J.J. School of Art, Bombay, and Gauri Bhanja and Kamala Das Gupta from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan.
AB: We find multiple influences and sensibilities in the displayed works of artists like Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi. They sustained vocabularies with lines, planes, vectors and arcs in their printmaking. But one also finds an oil on canvas by Mohamedi, a medium hardly associated with her oeuvre. This work is also significant for its experimentation, revealing a kind of lyrical abstraction we associate with V.S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta or Jeram Patel.
ARB: We have two prints by Mohamedi, which are self-explanatory, but the oil by her does come as a surprise. It is an earlier work and shows the journey of her practice, her mentee-ship under Gaitonde, and her friendship with Patel. Even Hashmi’s iconic woodcuts tell the story of abstractionism.
AB: There seems to be a lot of focus on prints and pedagogic modernism in Bengal in the 1920s and 1930s. Can you elaborate on this?
ARB: Santiniketan has always been in an extremely liberal space, and as early as the 1920s, it encouraged women to pursue art. At the same time, there were other women within the Tagore family, like Sunayani Devi, who were painting within the domesticity of their households. Sunayani Devi painted her family and the everyday flora and fauna. There was also an indulgence with Bhakti in her depiction of mythological themes and figures. Encouraged by Abanindranath, she found her niche in using the wash technique with colour. She has a painting of Jesus, which is phenomenal. There were also others like Gauri Bhanja and Kamala Das Gupta, who are perfect examples of those who made the transition from the andarlok to the bahar, evolving from self-learning to being a part of established art institutions. I wanted to bring to light some of these important transformational personalities and phases in the life of Bengal art.
AB: With regard to Bengal though, I notice that there is no representation of artists like Shanu Lahiri, Karuna Saha, Santosh Rohatgi and Shyamasree Basu, who were working around the same time as Meera Mukherjee. Similarly, for Baroda, there are the likes of Nilima Sheikh and Jyotsna Bhatt who are missing.
ARB: Yes, there are some gaps and ruptures. However, the exhibition is not a complete book of Indian women modernists. More like a conversation between sisters. Having said that, I am planning to work on a project on Shanu Lahiri soon.
AB: Most of these artists had well-known male counterparts. They lived under the shadows of their partners or teachers, and despite being stalwarts in their field, remained understudied. For instance, Reba Hore’s art reveals fragments of herself and the intimate world of the people she knew, which she later developed into her unique idiom of expression. There is also Leela Mukherjee for whom becoming an artist was an arduous project of self-determination, given that she was often overshadowed by her husband, Benode Behari Mukherjee. Was this an aspect you also wanted to highlight in the show?
ARB: While researching and writing about these artists, I had to be mindful of the words I was using. There was a strong male presence in many of their lives, but I did not want to undermine these women by calling them “significant others.” It was evident that each of them built a style that was different from their male associates, which had to be regarded in its own right.
For instance, we often think of sculpting as a masculine practice, which requires immense physical strength and involves heavy materials like concrete to create large structures. The sculptors in my exhibition break this stereotype.
There are Leela Mukherjee’s small to medium-sized sculptures in wood. Her contemporary, Meera Mukherjee, created sculptures in various sizes, mastering cumbersome, labour-intensive techniques, such as lost wax and bronze casting. She brought together an intricacy of detail with astute social commentary. The use of lines in her sculptures also challenged the oriental view of Indian art.
Kiran Barua’s ceramics are not just about forms but layers of discourse. They represent her anti-colonial sentiments, the inspiration she sought from tribal art, and the influences imbibed through her friendship with Jyotsna Bhatt in Baroda. These works stand apart from those by Ira Chaudhuri, who strove for completion and utilitarianism in her sculptures. She used text on pottery to provide texture to the surface, a pertinent aspect of modernism.
Other artists like Reba Hore, painted with discipline every day, going back to the domestic space and transforming her everyday habitat into a sensorial experience.
AB: Could you talk further about the show featuring pieces by Ira Chaudhuri and other ceramicists, who worked with the medium of studio pottery, which still struggles to find its legitimate niche within the art scene?
ARB: Ira Chaudhuri moved from Santiniketan to Baroda to join her husband Sankho Chaudhari, who was then Head of the Department for Sculpture at M.S. University. Following this shift, she started her practice of studio pottery. She focused on utilitarian potteries, inspired by pre-Columbian and Oceanic designs, calligraphic imprints (which she termed as “iramese”), along with complex techniques like sgraffito. As I mentioned before, this exhibition is a landing space for different mediums and formats of art, including studio pottery.
AB: The works by Amrita Sher-Gil are also rare, unknown pieces. Does this too resonate with the overall theme of the ‘lesser known’?
ARB: I am extremely happy about the fact that we could source these early works of Amrita Sher-Gil. Her interaction with Western modernism is well known, but the pieces we have chosen reflect the first phase of her career. She went to Paris so young, and painted themes inspired by Western fairytales, films and so on. These paintings are created using either charcoal or watercolour on paper, in contrast to the oil paintings she later came to be known for.
AB: This exhibition is an art historical excavation of sorts. Does it look at filling in gaps in the history of women artists in the 20th century?
ARB: The exhibition is a gender intervention, but as reiterated before, it cannot be considered a complete handbook. The show is also not only about women artists but about understanding the underlying structure of modernism. I wanted to look at the idea of modernism as a colonial trope, and the counter-colonial interpretation of modernism, which we call “contextual” or “indigenous modernism”.
Of Space of Their Own: Women Artists in 20th Century India is on at Akar Prakar, New Delhi, from September 18 to October 15, 2024.