While working on a series of sculptures on the labour class, artiste Megha Joshi had to travel through the streets of Gurgaon. It was then that she realised it was nearly impossible to do so because of her gender.
After an incident that left her angry, she dropped the project that she was working on and channelled her emotions into a new venture titled “I: Object”. Her works question why a woman’s breasts that nourish a child are treated as sexual objects.
Megha uses metal, fibreglass, silicon, fabric, ceramics and photographs in which she exhibits her own body to create the ridiculous to make a statement on life and society.
Reacting against censorship of the female body, she says a nipple without a breast is just a brown circle and does not merit censorship.
“Exposing the female nipple is banned on the Internet, even if it belongs to a breastfeeding mother, while male actors can go around exposing their nipples without being subjected to censorship.”
She wondered what women who are not privileged go through everyday when she, being a woman of privilege is not treated equally by society.
Megha immersed herself in studying zoology, biology and anthropology to come up with ideas for her show and the reason for the male gaze.
“My works are not to titillate, create the obscene or be blasphemous, but make a point and question social conditioning,” says Megha.
In a series of photographs titled “Sensor/Censored”, she has photographed herself by pasting silicone nipples on various parts of her body to ask — “Is it still sexual?”.
In her sculpture “Roots and Wings”, she has depicted breasts with wings and roots and asked if these roots prevent women from soaring or is being rooted as important.
She also questions if gender ends with death or continues because most rituals after death are mostly patriarchal.
In a sculpture made according to the Greek norms of anatomy, titled ‘Torso QED’ , she has interchanged breasts with buttocks in reference to the theory that human female breasts have evolved from the ape’s round buttocks as “sexual signalling devices” for mates.
Immense thought has gone into creating each work and the artiste shows her versatility by way of working with various material and styles to create a show that is bold, to the point and thought-provoking.
The exhibition is on at Art Konsult gallery in Lado Sarai till December 30.
