Poet Sukrita Paul recently exhibited her paintings, depicting the different worlds of women, at the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, French Cultural Society, New Delhi recently. It was followed by a lecture by the artist leading to a discussion on feminism and gender. Prof. Paul opened a series of discussions on feminism and gender.
Her works show women without any features. Explaining this, she said that she has tried to show a woman as a whole rather than showing her features. “The idea is not to portray in the conventional style. So that is the essence that I want to carry through the whole body. It's like the whole body is trying to say something. If I would have shown features, the focus would have been diverted to that rather than what I have tried to explain.”
The paintings show women who are suppressed, free and happy and successful and those leading the society. “Through some of the work I have tried to express the feeling of freedom which a woman can feel while looking at the painting. There are women who have found spaces in life, who are free and successful. It is representation of different kinds of world of women,” she says.
Explaining the different forms of feminism in India, Paul’s paintings show how it is understood by different cultures. “There are many (forms of) feminism happening in India. Academics are evolving, there are different cultures and then there is activism. So, the context of feminism changes every time. We have a diversity here. There is a large chunk which is the educated class dealing intellectually with it. Maybe all of them are not able to deal with feminism on the ground but intellectually, yes. Then there are NGOs who have their own view about how a woman needs to be empowered. Then there are others who are looking at masculinity and not talking about feminism as feminism. So, feminism cannot mean the same to everybody,” she explains.
Highlighting the role of brush in a poet’s life, she comments: “Because I am a poet, I started painting. If one is a poet one works with pictures and sometimes need a canvas more than a poem. So, I wanted to express the pictures as they come in my mind to come on the canvas and function as a poem.”
