8th All-India Women Artists’ Contemporary Art Exhibition, 2019

Purnoor, Chandigarh

8th All-India Women Artists’ Contemporary Art Exhibition, 2019 was inaugurated by Shri Dinkar Gupta, IPS. Director General of Police  at the Galleries of Fine Arts Museum, Punjab University, Chandigarh,here today.

He gave away the following awards:

4 Professional Category: 

Rs 50,000/- KavitaMehrotra (from Lukhnow Uttar Pradesh)  for ‘Exist of Life’

Rs 45,000/- Neha Jaiswal (from Allahabad, UP ) for Paturkar ‘Campanion’

Rs 40,000/- PreetiDhaniya (from Panchkula, Haryana) for ‘Bounded Precious Time’

Rs 35,000/- VarshaMithunNiranjan (from Solapur, Maharashtra ) for ‘Good Morning’

4 Student Category : 

Rs. 25,000/- AratiMaurya (from Khairaghar, Chattisgarh ) for ‘Qurisity-3′

Rs. 25,000/- Reetu (from Khairaghar, Chattisgarh )for ‘Emergence’

Rs 20,000/-  Agomoni Sen (from Ranchi, Jharkhand ) for ‘Inward Lookingl’

Rs 20,000/-  PriyaSisodiya  (from Hyderabad, Telangana ) for ‘3 Generations’

KavitaMehrotra lives in lukhnow Uttar pradesh

Armed with a master’s degree in fine arts, Kavita is a talented young artist from Lucknow. She has participated in many National and International shows, exhibitions and has received admiration for her solo show” oozy of Formative Art”. An immensely gifted artist Kavita is sure to leave a mark on your creative mind and heart.

Exist of Life

Etching with Dry paint 60 cm x 46 cm

Neha Jaiswal lives in Allahabad, UP

Hailing from Allahbad, home for many renowned artists, Neha had  been a brilliant students in both academics and arts.  Neha has participated in many National art activities over the years. With many awards under her belt she wants to paint the world with her creativity.  Neha has also hosted 2 solo exhibitions which received great rave reviews from the world of art.

Campanion

Etching 49 cm x 50 cm

Preeti Dhaniya lives in Panchkula, Haryana

The effervescent Preeti hails from Panchkula, Haryana. She has been actively participating in various shows, exhibitions in Haryana, Chandigarh, Shimla on a regular basis. Preeti has been awarded by All India Fine Arts and crafts society for hew wonderful work in sculpting. A motivated artist,she has done some astounding work and has many achievements to her credit

Bounded Precious Time

Wood 99 cm x 49 cm x 11 cm

Varsha Mithun Niranjan lives in Solapur, Maharashtra

A talented young artist from Sholapur, has been a recipient of special jury award at 123rd All India Annual Art Exhibition in 2015. Her dedication and love for art reflects from all the work she firmly believes in the language of her craft. She has won accolades for her work at the 52nd Maharashtra State art exhibition and Camal art Foundation Western Region Art Exhibition.

Good Morning

Oil and acrylic 36 cm x 48 cm

Arati Maurya lives in Khairaghar, Chattisgarh

Pursuing her  M.F.A. (Graphics) , talented and ambitious Arati has many achievements under her belt.  She has been awarded at the Annual Art Exhibition , BHU .  This young artist is determined to follow her dreams and carve a niche for herself.

Qurisity-3

Woodcut 30″ x 48″

Reetu lives in Khairaghar, Chattisgarh

Having won the Zonal Art Award 2017-18, by State Lalit kala Academy, U.P Reetu has proved her mettle in the field of art. With numerous participations, awards and a solo show; “Astitva” An Exhibition of paintings and graphics prints under her belt , she has  been winning high accolades. Her stupendous work which celebrates her versatility and creativity is sure to take her places.

Emergence

Woodcut 90 cm x 120 cm

Agomoni Sen lives in Ranchi, Jharkhand

Hailing from Ranchi Agomani has done her Masters in Fine arts from Visva Bharti, Kala BhavanaShantiniketan. An artist who lets her work speak for her, Agomoni is immensely talented and determined to follow her dreams.

Inward Looking

Acrylic on Canvas 48″ x 36″

Priya Sisodiya lives in Hyderabad, Telangana

PriyaSisodiya is a fiercely motivated young artist hailing from Hyderabad. She is doing final year of her BFA degree course from Sri Venkateswara College of Fine Arts, Hyderabad. Her work is a reflection of nature, tender softness and inclined love towards girl child. Seeking inspiration from every existing thing as almighty’s expression her work is a reflection of her soul.

3 Generations

Wood Cut On Paper 33″x24″

Art Critic

All India Women Artists Contemporary Art Exhibition 2019

Professor Seema Bawa

Art Historian, Critic and Curator

Painting a World of their Own

Ah, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn’t figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.’

    -Judy Chicago

‘Ah, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn’t figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.’ Judy Chicago

Chicago’s views on her own art practice with a concomitant awareness about gender imbalance and on the overt patriarchy that informs social and cultural behavior is very telling; given that Chicago has brought a critical feminist gaze to the gender construct of masculinity, exploring how prevailing definitions of power have affected the world in general — and men in particular, in the way artists view their own work process. 

The role of the subversive artist, particularly the woman artist, becomes significant in the exhibitions of Artscapes; which is holding the eighth edition of All-India Women Artists Contemporary Art Exhibition, that encourage women artists to simultaneously engage with creativity and contemporary concerns.

The continuous commitment to the cause of projecting and encouraging women artists through competition, selection and subsequent display can be seen in the larger context of feminist art movements in India and abroad. Through such movements the artist as both an activist with a creative soul and also as a symbol of resistance and subversion of dominant ideology is brought center-stage. Thus, Art enters into fields of political and social activism, becoming one of the catalysts for struggle for visibility, validity and assertion of value. Women artists all over have taken up the issues of oppression, race, colour, and gender. They have succeeded in privileging a special position for women within the larger discourse of cultural practice. Women in art have brought to the fore an agenda that can be differentiated from the largely androcentric art practice. They have done this not merely by questioning and resisting patriarchy but also by endorsing an agenda of their own.  

Mainstream art criticism seeks to contain the dichotomy between the woman artist’s richer albeit different lived-world through “placing” or labeling it. There is an inherent inequality and bias embedded in the very language that we use in common as well as academic discourse, where there is a very conscious emphasis on the gender of the creator when referring to women who write, sing, paint, or run for political office as specifically “women writers”, “women singers”, “women painters”, and “women politicians”. Exhibition of works of “male artists” are only mentioned as “artists” without emphasizing the gender. Thus, on the one hand men are seen to be the norm and women an aberration and therefore need to be labelled and /or valorised. On the other hand, women artists, writers, etc., become categories representative of all women while men are perceived to be unique individuals.  This aspect predicates the felt need by women artistes to on the one hand recover a space of their own within the discourse of art and on the other mainstream it from the margins as unique painterly works. To appreciate the polyphony of inherent in these works, we have to be aware of and be sensitive to the heterogeneity of backgrounds, styles and genres the women artists’ represent. The artists in the current show have a larger canvas to work with, especially given the competition format, that allows for a wide array of genres, styles, mediums and sensibilities at play.

This brings us to a significant question regarding as to whether women artist have a world of their own to paint and sculpt qua women artists’ art practice.  Perhaps the training and the technique belong to a shared space of both men and women, where gender is insignificant and at this level it is skill that takes front stage. However, the lived experience, the fears, insecurities, dis-privileging are definitely gendered and at some level do pervade the Weltanschauung of women as artists. The space painted is often personal, with a deep emotive content that seems to somehow be ‘smaller’ but more dense or “thicker”. 

The concern with women’s’ art and artist is entangled with the discourse of the individual artefact and its meanings that occurred during ‘the transition from modernism to postmodernism, which was also that from the concept of the artist as a bohemian to the artist as a social thinker; from the microcosm of the studio to society.’       

This can be seen in the works of women artists in India who despite a lack of a formal engagement with the feminist movements, have been carving out and recovering spaces as their own. The feminisation of themes, the experimentations with style, uniqueness of sensibility, are all hallmarks of women’s art as can be seen in the current show. This is not to suggest that art produced and conceptualised by women artists is homogenous and monolithic- it is in fact, just the opposite- diverse and vibrant, mirroring the diversity of artists themselves. From the self to the family and from there on to larger social issues and concerns that inform women’s lives and worlds are the tropes within which artists such as PriyaSisodiya’s and Shobha Nagar’s work.

One way to for the viewer to recover the depth of the works could be to examine women’s engagement with art in both historical and critical terms and to relate these with contemporary art practice. Given the colonial discourse within which easel and academy art developed, it is not surprising that traditional arts, which were the forte of women, got marginalised, trivialised and pushed into the background.

Most of traditional arts, be it painting the alpana and the kolam on the floor, or the elaborate paintings on the bridal chamber of Mithila, were and are still done by women, be it in the folk or the tribal style. Neha Jaiswal’s etching Companion uses this style to excavate the notion of nascent violence perpetrated against women by patriarchal societies. 

Contemporary art practice by women tends to locate the female and the feminine in the self where there is an increasing concern with the body as the site within which feminine identity is framed. The works of Agomoni Sen and AratiMauraya highlight this, especially the latter where the woman is gazing at her reflection in the mirror and inviting the viewer to become part of this self-conscious engagement with the self.

Indeed one observes a preponderance of figurative works in the selection. One wonders if abstraction is gender neutral or can we read some degree of feminisation in terms of colours and compositions. We hope that subsequent shows of women artists by Artscape shall be able to provide some insights into the processes and practices that go into making of women’s painted worlds. 

The Event

Since its inception in 2011, Artscapes has become an integral part of creativity and cognition at the national level. We have envisioned the main objective of working towards the development of women artists through our various art activities. Apart from art exhibition, other art activities are also organized from time to time. It is very important to understand and know the efforts of Artscapes for society. Promotion of originality and innovation, which is the sensory nature of the challenges of aesthetical beauty and fantasies, has always been a part of our norms. Artscapes in a way represents feminism  through almost all of its art programmes, wherein women artists get to come together and share their expressions. This overall involvement of women is introduced and displayed through their artworks, which combines both uncompromising human and artistic values in it. It is a demonstration of unique creativity, thus also including cooperation within competition. Artscpaes fosters and encourages both folk art and modern contemporary art concepts. It gives away awards to the best creative works and collects and preserves many of them too as encouragement.

Artscapes works on the fundamental aspect of art and culture. It provides an opportunity and support in priority to explore, research and project various forms and mediums of artistic expressions. We leave the interpretation of creativities on the viewers regardless of the debate of professional or academic qualities of the artworks, in order to make them share their own true experiences and expressions of joy and Rasa to the society themselves. Primarily our goal is to continue displaying artworks surrounding the centralization of women’s existence in the context of culture, aesthetics, social, economic and human values. Artscapes happens to be a medium through which we  represent the artistic interpretation of organisational arrangements in between the artist and the society. We try to showcase the art originated and inspired by the insights of women’s entity it its purest and true sense. It indeed is a matter of sensitivity and thoughtfulness. All the events and activities of Artscapes, majorly this particular All India Contemporary Women Artists Art exhibition is organised annually to support their vital contribution and resurrection of their existence through art as a means of voicing out. In this way, we accept and present various means of defining the identity of Indian art such as painting art, sculpture, art and art. Through this event we display the art of rural and urban contemporary women providing them an equal and similar platform. This makes our Indian multi-cultural unity and integrity more precious, prestigious, developed and empowered!

Through our All India Contemporary Women Artists Art Exhibition 2019, it is our humble effort to present the powerful and creative spirit of women artists working in all the parts of the country to art lovers, critics, students and viewers. About 170 artworks are included in the exhibition through the process of juried selection. By honoring the prize and honorable citation during the inaugural ceremony of the exhibition, we strive to convert the nature of women’s thinking, power, respect and equality into the empowerment.