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MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE ‘On the coconut grove’

Words have been scribbled in charcoal on the left hand and right chest of a woman’s silhouette in the painting “Puppet”, at the exhibition of works by Sajitha Gowry (formerly known as Sajitha R. Shankar). The words written in Malayalam are intimate, and some have faded.

The paintings at this exhibition titled “In search of femininity” deal with being a woman, and are contained and introspective, done in blacks, reds, browns and subdued gold.

With the works, Sajitha discusses personal and political subjects. “Puppet” shows a woman with her hands held up and her long hair flying, like she is banging against the canvas, wanting to break out of it. It was done when Sajitha was going through a traumatic face in her life. She had been through a divorce, tried reconciliation and separated again. “I felt like a puppet in other people’s hands,” she says.

Sajitha uses her body as a form — she traces it on the canvas, and tries to discuss personal-social experiences on it, like in the “Puppet” or mystical experiences like in “On the coconut grove”.

Inspired by her experience with meditation, “On the coconut grove” has golden stars on it, because, “you feel like the body sparkles during meditation.” The experience of the woman’s body is palpable in her works, and it is a political statement — of women expressing their body in art. “When a man draws a nude woman it tends to be superficial, but a woman artist will get the woman in totality… the flesh and the blood,” she says.

The idea of “amma” (mother) makes a recurrent appearance in her paintings. Hailing from Kerala, Sajitha is fascinated by the “amma” worship in the state. At the exhibition, a painting titled “Amma” is inspired from a Dravidian form in an ancient temple. On either of its sides are “Earthscape” and “An eyes” paintings, with big, circular outlines. Below the painting, on the floor, is the outline of a triangle pointing outwards, done in cream-coloured tape and filled with vermillion powder and in the centre, turmeric powder.

“Step back from the wall (with the three paintings and the triangle) and you will see that it resembles a woman’s breasts and her pelvis,” says Sajitha, with a laugh. “It was not planned.”

The exhibition is dedicated to the late dancer Chandralekha, and a painting titled after her shows the silhouette of a woman, expressing surrender with hands held out and hair flying. Faint outlines of landscapes run across her. “Chandralekha had a mystical connection with nature. In the painting that depicts the five elements, I wanted to show her dissolve into Nature.” Sajitha now runs the Gowry Art Institute in Vamanapuram (Kerala), a place for contemporary women artists to meet.

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