The Female Hero

Sandhya Bordewekar, the noted critic and curator, in a first person narrative recounts her trials and tribulations, and of course the joy and ecstasy in putting up a show titled ‘The Female Hero’ at the ‘young’ Lemongrasshopper Gallery in Ahmedabad.

The Lemongrasshopper is a new gallery that opened in Ahmedabad in early 2006. Ahmedabad has no ‘real’ galleries to speak of. The existing exhibition spaces – Contemporary Art Gallery, Hutheesing Visual Arts Centre, Ravishankar Raval Gallery of the Gujarat Lalit Kala Akademi, Herwitz Gallery at the Amdavad ni Gufa are more often available on rent without much consideration to the quality of work displayed. The Marvel Gallery, to a certain extent, is an exception, operating more like a regular gallery. Lemongrasshopper has been started by Khanjan and Shradhavi Dalal, a young couple running a graphic design studio in the city. Khanjan studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, in the 1990s and then went to the Netherlands to study Design.

Their Gallery is situated rather far from the city (about 15 kms), off the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway at Shilpagram, a settlement of farmhouses. But the sylvan surroundings are charming and the gallery-farmhouse is designed innovatively, especially for the display of sculptures, ceramics, installations and multi-dimensional work. Since all the images of the works are also displayed on the Lemongrasshopper website, it is not always necessary for a prospective buyer to visit the Gallery.

When Khanjan met me in Baroda in late March 2006, I was still smarting from my involvement in an exhibition which had all gone horribly wrong. I was in no mood to either deal with galleries or artists in the context of an exhibition. But in his own gentle way, Khanjan was persuasive, and I am an incurable sucker for supporting ventures that go against the conventional grain – a gallery in Ahmedabad is surely a challenge. And then he agreed to all the conditions that I laid down. He wanted to do a ‘women artists’ show and wanted me to help him with it. I made a list of possible women artists who could be invited to the show and worked out a basic note on the theme of the show. It was already April and he wanted a show around September-October. That was the first hurdle, given the number of new galleries that have sprouted in the last few years and older galleries who have extended their spaces resulting in a virtual back-to-back exhibition calendar that many Indian artists are committed to not just in India but also abroad. Some artists were also busy with their own solo shows. So that cancelled a few good/interesting artists from our list, which was a pity but could not be helped.

The wall space in Lemongrasshopper is not very much but the space for multi-dimensional works is exciting. So I re-worked the list of artists, adding more women working in sculpture/ceramics, and many of the painters/printmakers were more than happy to be able to send in smaller works which we could accommodate easily in the Gallery. I was quite keen that women artists from Ahmedabad have a presence in the show. There were seven artists from the city – Esther David, a trained sculptor who is more known as an author in recent years and who agreed to participate as her homage to her guru, Sankho Chaudhuri, Llanos Ortiz-Montero, a Spanish artist based in England and currently Guest Faculty at the NID who made an installation, Nina Sabnani who teaches Animation at the NID and has been working on interactive sculptures in acrylic for the last few years; and amongst the youngsters, Neha Lavingiya (whose work was superb), Shefali Nayan, Nikita Parikh, Ratna Gandhi and architect Radhika Doshi Kathpalia.

I was also gratified that many of the artists approached reacted positively to the Theme Note circulated to the prospective artists. The show was titled The Female Hero: Amaterasu /Demeter /Isis
/Frejya /Sedna /Artemis/Coatlicue /Tara/ Ishtar/ Shakti.
What we were trying to do was to celebrate the Mother Goddess who has been usually sidelined as the “Other”, as compared to the more visually apparent goddesses of mainstream religions. I tried to link the history of the Mother Goddess as parallel to the several layers of women’s history. As women artists constantly engaged in the problematics of creation, I was sure that most women artists, at some point of time, must have reflected upon the ‘other-ness’ and marginalization experienced as a practicing female artist in India. And this would be reflected in the works translated into an art statement. 32 women artists, a good number I thought, participated in the show.

Some of the most powerful works received in direct ‘interpretation’ of this note were by young Sonatina Mendes (Goa-Baroda), Vibha Galhotra (Delhi), Payal Shah (Mumbai), Santana Gohain, Swarupa Shah, Shruti Nelson, Kyoungae, Nandini Das, Lavanya Mani, Maneesha Doshi (all Baroda), Niva Devi Baruah (Guwahati). From the image received of Rita’s (Ghaziabad/Delhi) work, it appeared that this sculpture may have been one of the best in the exhibition, but unfortunately it never arrived. Rita was supposed to send it by courier, then she said she would bring it herself, then she fell ill and neither she nor the sculpture finally showed up. Rita has earlier participated in the ‘Feb Show’ held in Baroda every February by a group of Baroda artists with whom I have been involved. Her work is unusual and interesting but often needs her presence for its correct display. As a person, she is rather quiet, keeping to herself most of the time. But as a practicing artist, she must find a way to counter such last minute hurdles. Her non-participation certainly affected the show, to say the least.

Trupti Patel’s evocative oil on canvas and Varsha Nair’s photograph of two police women relaxing in the Railway Station waiting room, titled “Hum Hain Na…” quite set the mood for the show. The Gallery has two entrances, and in our first ‘grouping’ of the show a week before the opening, I had placed Varsha’s work right at the entrance that we had decided would be ‘used’ for this show. Then there was a problem about how Esther David’s installation would be positioned since it also required for the viewer to listen to a recording. That made the other entrance more viable and that was it.

But the surprise package of the show was two women – Homai Vyarawalla and Ira Chaudhuri, indomitable Parsi ladies with an incredible zest for life, and possibly amongst our most senior artists. Vyarawalla is an active 93-year-old who lives life alone on her terms and in complete independence. She offered an emotionally-charged photograph –Lalita Shastri mourning the death of her husband Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. Iraben, who tirelessly looked after husband Sankho Chaudhuri through his protracted illness, and is coming out of mourning to celebrate the wedding of son Itu in early November, offered three ceramic works for the show. We approached them with apprehension but were greeted with cordiality and support. Iraben even came to the opening and then traveled to Baroda to sprinkle some of Sankho Chaudhuri’s ashes in a the tiny pond at the Faculty of Fine Arts that he had made with his students many decades back.

While Khanjan, Shradhavi and I were immersed in the nitty-gritty of getting the show ready and off its feet, I was thrilled to find that participating artists Trupti Patel and Jyotsna Bhatt were busy organizing how to be there for the opening. Trupti was on the phone with sculptor Karl Antao to ‘manage who would sleep where’ on the night of the opening – until Shradhavi offered to organize for all ‘travelling in’ visitors to sleep at a comfortable house in the neighbourhood of the Gallery, with morning bed tea and breakfast thrown in! Jyoti Bhatt decided to join wife Jyotsna, Kyoungae took the opportunity to be with some Korean friends in Ahmedabad, and travel back with me to Baroda the next morning. Rekha Rodwittiya called me for a chat on the afternoon of the opening, found I was in Ahmedabad and made impromptu plans to get together Sonatina, Malavika and Karishma and drive down to Ahmedabad for the opening (in spite of still recovering from Chikunguniya!) Trupti, the original mover and shaker, of all this hectic activity, almost did not make it due to having come down with a severe attack of Chikunguniya herself. But she did and I was most relieved that she could.

If this was not all about Female Heroes, what could be?