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Bold take on women

Sandhya Gopinath sensitively portrays women in the Indian cultural context

FEMININE THEME, HER FORTE One of Sandhya's work

In her first solo art exhibition, "Mahila: Past and Present", Sandhya Gopinath explores the many faces of the feminine revealing a passion in her handling of the theme. An alumnus of the Department of Fine Arts, Stella Maris College, Chennai, she has continued her art education under the guidance of artist A. V. Ilango. Her works portray women in different circumstances, assuming multifarious roles, allowing the viewer a glance at another world. The artist's impression of certain instances in a woman's life reveals her as living through and sensitively reacting to every situation.

Sandhya has used fabric, which is analogous to the sari, to emphasise the idea of an Indian woman. However, the use of the appended material is regarded as extraneous and removed from her later works, which rely on textured backgrounds and layered strokes of paint to build up the form. The essence of the original idea remains, simply without the variable of the fabric. As the drapery is pushed aside to reveal the inner aspects of a woman existing within the Indian cultural context, the artist incorporates the idea of the shadow as indicative of the gloom that sometimes shrouds a woman's life.

Power play

Commodified within the consumer culture of a patriarchal society, women are often perceived as sensuous creatures and sex objects. This portrayal of women in the mass media is but a reflection, although a distorted one, of how women are regarded and made out to be in a consumer society. Finding ways to articulate her thoughts, Sandhya interprets the sex trade by means of a shadow of the male hovering over the female form. The placement of the figures speaks of power play, where the female floats downward while the male soars dramatically above her. Other images depict her as stretched out and exposed in her physical entity, but repeatedly cowering with shame within her soul while bloodstained hands caress her corporeal form. The handprints are also seen in the instance of the woman being created on the potter's wheel. She may then be read as a product of society, moulded by multiple hands, shaped to fit within a preconceived notion of whom, what or how a woman should be.

However, in spite of the infinite disheartening characterisations that the young artist projects, she maintains a positive note, for there is also the personification of the universal woman, who with her multiple heads is comparable with the goddesses of Indian Hindu mythology, constantly aspiring to a status that is often denied her.

A bold take on a subject close to her heart, Sandhya's ideas are articulated through her creativity. The show is on till April 12 at Lakshana Museum of Aarts, 8, Judge Jambulingam Street, Mylapore.

SWAPNA SATHISH

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