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THE ARTS: WOMAN/GODDESS Woman as Icon The travelling exhibition with works of 27 leading photographers tackles the theme in independent India. By S. Kalidas
Urban India is learning to look at two things afresh. One, it is beginning to view photography as an art form independent of its documentary role. Second, it is starting to read the subtext that informs the image of woman in Indian society. In the recent past there have been exhibitions of both photography and the feminist discourse within it too. But perhaps few as yet have matched in scale and scope the show opening at the British Council in Delhi on October 5. Curated by art critic Gayatri Sinha and designed by painter Amitava Das, the exposition -- including 27 photographers and over 60 pictures -- is titled simply Woman/Goddess. Over the next four months it is slated to travel to Calcutta (October 25 to November 3), Bangalore (November 12-26), Chennai (December 6-18) and Mumbai (Jan 4-20, 2000). "The idea was initially to look at how the concept of the goddess is used in contemporary cinema, advertising, entertainment and politics," says Sinha, who has been working on the theme for some years now. But from there the exhibition has grown to include images of ordinary rural or urban women in their relationship to female divinity. Sinha has built up section by section a play of sub-themes. So if you have Praful Patel and Frank Horvat depicting the widows of the 1950s and their rituals of sati, penance and deprivation, there are Jyoti Bhatt and Henri Cartier-Bresson plumbing the woman-goddess relationship in the idyllic rural landscape. The invoking of the sacred and the supernatural is there too through the lens of Sheba Chhachi, Dayanita Singh and Pepita Seth. Chhachi's powerful works of the sturdy, intimidating, female sadhvis at the Kumbh contrasts with Singh's lyrical pictures of the young innocent girls at the Kanyapeeth established by Anandamayi Ma in Varanasi. As objects of entertainment Saibal Das has a sequence of circus girls in their sequinned tights while Singh catches Rekha and Saroj Khan shooting for Kismet (1994) in Bollywood. The traverse from the screen goddess to the goddess on screen is covered in a flashback with stills from Savitri (1955) played by Jayashree Gadkar and Mother India (1957) starring the inimitable Nargis in Mehboob Khan's classic. There is too that much recalled image of Sharmila Tagore in Satyajit Ray's Devi (1960). As devadasi practitioners of the high classical arts of Bharatnatyam and Carnatic music we have Avinash Pasricha's mood portraits of the legendary Balasaraswati and M.S. Subbulakshmi. Then there is the aspect of the mystical and the magical where female divinity is invoked in myriad folk cultures as explored by Seth in her pictures of the non-Brahminical practices of Theyyam and Kaliattam where men don elaborate make-up and costumes to invoke the spirit of the devi to cure, propitiate and exorcise. Interestingly, it is invariably believed that only when men don this vesham (role) can the devi incarnate herself in their form. Just as Chapal Bhaduri, an out of work jatra (Bengali folk theatre) actor, now dons the roop (form) of Sheetala Ma every night to drive out smallpox and other ailments from the bodies of his audience. Women wielding political power have always been objects of veneration too. After the Bangladesh war Indira Gandhi was elevated to the status of Durga and Jayalalitha today is frequently seen in forms ranging from a blood-thirsty Kali to that of a benign Virgin Mary. There is this incredible photograph by Ram Rehman of Indira Gandhi consecrated in a roadside shrine made of paper, tinsel and bamboo shards very similar to the tazias made by devout Muslims during Muharram. In front of this fragile paper temple to Indiraji stands a big dustbin in the three colours of the Indian flag. Beside it is placed a mop. Need one comment? A 200-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition with
articles by photographer Raghu Rai, art historian Jyotindra Jain and Tantra expert Madhu
Khanna besides Sinha's curatorial discourse. "We are using a lot of text with the
images," says Sinha, "so that besides documentation there is also some
interpretative comment." Augmenting the show in each of the five metros are a number
of wraparound events. A film festival, performances, poetry reading, panel discussions and
street theatre. A package women would be proud of. |
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Woman. that
eternal enigma. Goddess, mother, daughter, consort, seductress, wife, harlot, saint. Woman
as shakti (power), woman as prakriti (nature). Woman empowered by the public gaze and the
woman deified in death. Woman in action and woman in performance. Woman appropriating the
male domain and man inventing for himself a feminine persona.