oil, acrylic, fabric, etching, metal leaf on canvas
I’m interested in the coexistence of traditional and perverse depictions of the feminine in India. I incorporate Indian textiles and traditional architecture with sourced images of sexually “perverse” women within a singular composition. I source images of women from popular cultural sources like Bollywood, and taboo cultures like pornography, and place these women in traditional “zenanas” (which are spaces in a house that are reserved only for women and prohibit men from entering). I am inspired by South Asian Zenana miniature paintings and their depictions of female homoeroticism. By using traditional Indian aesthetics to depict queer sexualities, I challenge the nationalist condemnation of queerness as “western,” and collapse the constructed binary between “authentic Indian tradition,” and corrupting “western modernity.”
