The panel “Women in Art” brought together two exceptional voices from India’s creative community in a thoughtful and deeply reflective conversation moderated by Dilpreet Bhullar, Managing Editor, TAKE on Art. The dialogue explored the intersection of gender, memory, personal expression, and materiality in the artistic practices of Manisha Gera Baswani, Visual Artist & Photographer, and Lakshmi Madhavan, Textile Artist, while highlighting the significance of women’s personal histories in shaping broader cultural narratives.
Bhullar opened the session with a powerful reference to Carol Hanisch’s 1970s essay “The Personal is Political”, which has become a slogan of resistance and feminist consciousness over time. She highlighted how, in India, where intersectionality is both a lived reality and an analytical lens, the personal experiences of women become critical to understanding larger sociopolitical structures. Drawing from the works of art historian D.D. Kosambi, she emphasised the role of oral traditions, personal archives, and subaltern histories in disrupting dominant, linear narratives.
Manisha Gera Baswani presented a visual journey of her two-decade-long artistic career, which she described as “almost autobiographical.” Trained as a painter, her practice organically evolved into photography and archiving.
A deeply moving segment of her presentation was the Partition Project, born from her visit to Pakistan for a solo exhibition. There, she began photographing Pakistani artists and capturing their oral histories—stories that echoed her own family’s memories of displacement post-Partition. Her mother’s words—”God held your hands to tell our stories”—capture the emotional depth of this project.
Manisha’s work blends personal experiences with artistic inspirations. From referencing pop culture icons like Elvis Presley and James Bond to responding to life’s milestones—such as the birth of her children, familial loss, and even WhatsApp messages—her art is layered with symbolism, humour, and heartfelt emotion. She spoke of her creative use of tea as a dye, reminiscent of how grandmothers once tinted fabrics, and how Indian miniatures and architecture frequently inform her aesthetic. A particularly evocative piece revolved around a Shahtoosh shawl passing through a wedding ring, questioning conventional ideas of successful marriages and women’s roles within them.
Textile artist Lakshmi Madhavan offered a deeply personal and nuanced reflection on her engagement with Kasavu—the traditional handwoven textile from Kerala—and the broader challenges she has navigated in reclaiming space for her work within the contemporary art world.
Prompted by the moderator to speak about her relationship with textile traditions, especially those passed down through generations of women, Madhavan responded with a quiet candour. She acknowledged that working with textiles and craft mediums traditionally associated with domesticity and femininity often places an artist within predetermined categories.
“Because I work with textiles and because I work with craft, it is almost always assumed that it is a female, domestic domain,” she said. “Now you add craft to it, and it becomes even more boxed in.”
Madhavan shared her early experiences of being constantly slotted into textile- or craft-specific exhibitions, such as those at craft museums or national museums, rather than being recognised within mainstream contemporary art spaces. Despite the conceptual depth of her work, her practice was frequently introduced with reductive labels like “female textile artist”, even before her narratives were allowed to unfold.
“There is this baggage of all these titles. Then there’s a lot of slotting and categorisation—because you work with craft, is it even meant to be contemporary art?”
However, rather than being discouraged, this misrecognition fuelled her artistic journey. She spoke of her deliberate choice to work with Kasavu, despite not being from a family of weavers or directly belonging to that community. The gold and white palette—distinctive of Kasavu—became more than an aesthetic choice; it served as a visual language rooted in memory, identity, and cultural rhythm.
Leave a Reply