In Santosh Jain’s electronic artwork Daydreaming 1, an picture of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus jostles with a further of Raja Ravi Varma’s Hamsa And Damayanti. Equally goddess and princess, however, recede into the track record, as if to symbolise the way females are continuously diminished by preferred culture and culture, whichever their status or privilege. The focal stage, as a substitute, is an picture of a alternatively unsavoury-seeking person in a brilliant yellow shirt, perched on a bike. Fool’s Paradise, a seemingly prosaic picture of a team of gals, feels oddly disconcerting owing to the superimposition of two black and white sketches of bare adult men. In Joy Ride, one more digital landscape, a photograph of a coach packed with men—an ordinary plenty of sight in India—acquires a unexpected touch of whimsy many thanks to the digital insertion of various female figures.
Jain’s digital landscapes are an incongruous, even surrealistic, melange of disconnected images and sorts that occur jointly to straight address the common subordination of women in art and life. Historically, gals have never been the central character of any story, claims the 72-calendar year-artist, who is exhibiting a variety of her function at the clearly show She’s In The Streets, She’s In The Stars, at Method Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, till 25 July. “They are usually pushed back again, by no means specified credit, conclusion up staying silent sufferers,” suggests Jain, who has explored themes of womanhood from the starting of her just about 5-ten years-very long profession. “Through my artwork, I have explored the numerous strategies in which gals are an integral aspect of culture, spouse and children and existence alone.”
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Jain, a graduate of Delhi’s Higher education of Art, started her vocation in 1971 as a printmaker. She went on to gain a two-year fellowship in the Netherlands, returning to Delhi in 1976 and venturing into art schooling. She has experimented with many types in excess of the decades: lithographs, collages, paintings and photographs. “What is interesting is the evolution of her function. The simple fact that she in no way bought into a comfort and ease zone,” claims Sahil Arora, the founder of Strategy. “There was a consistent pushing of the envelope, pushing the boundaries of the equipment and mediums she is operating with,” he states.
For instance, she determined to study pictures in her early 60s. A few yrs later, Jain taught herself Photoshop and started digitally inserting new components into her photographs, imparting new this means to the visual narrative. She continues, however, to use classic artistic instruments like acrylic, charcoal, paints and brushes as nicely to greatly enhance her photographs. “Lots of men and women advised me that digital art was not artwork. But I savored it, so I kept generating,” suggests Jain, whose digital do the job usually has aesthetic factors drawn from her printmaking track record.
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She’s In The Streets, She’s In The Stars is made up of a variety of Jain’s perform, from electronic landscapes to a lot more conventional art in acrylic, charcoal or paper that “have appear collectively in a quite cohesive manner”, as Arora claims. “The use of the feminine figure is a consistent concept in her artwork,” he claims, introducing that Jain provides a boldly feminist choose on womanhood, making females the centrepiece, not afterthoughts, of her get the job done. “There is a kind of realness and grittiness to the females in there,” he states.
‘She’s In The Streets, She’s In The Stars’ is on at Strategy Kala Ghoda till 25 July.Timings as for each federal government mandate.