Historicizing the Female Archetype

Suvarna, the recipient of Kerala Lalit Kala Akademy for the year 2007 creates contemporary female icons out of ordinary women seen attached to their immediate surroundings through dress codes and other cultural codes. Bipin Balachandran features her pivotal works.

Suvarna

Literally, Suvarna feels at home when she paints. This is one of the reasons for her canvases being the exploration of a domestic world. However, though these paintings are set against a homely back ground, it operates at different levels of meanings and problematic some of already established notions of the so called feminist views. More often these paintings represent self images of the artist, contiguous to any other such works of contemporary art world. Nevertheless these canvases are distinctive as the artist takes two different positions and successfully blends them together. The dual role, here are of a creative individual of our times and of the female of the species with its own exclusive qualities, derived from the archetypal female. Suvarna blends these two identities by incorporating a new iconographic program which does not obliterate the signs of a historical context. It can also be explained that these new iconographic program bears the history of evolution through which the archetypal female has been passing on. It is note worthy that these two identities are not in a conflict as it has often been viewed even in some of the most appreciated works having the label of feminism.

The recurrent image in Suvarna’s paintings, as already mentioned is that of a mother goddess, rendered with a contemporary iconographic bend.This is, indeed, her self realization identifying herself with the ultimate creative power-sakti.

In painting No-1 She holds a real mirror near her womb, set at the eye level of the viewer so that the viewer sees his/her image on the mirror which becomes a part of the whole composition. It is so reminiscent of the mirror held by Parvati in the Ardha Nariswara image where she in Vimarsini or Kulanayika. “ It is she who brings in to manifestation all objects of experience, the experience itself and the experients” (1).But here sakthi is not in her mythical attributes. On the other hand, she is in her night gown with painstakingly drawn designs all over it. On her left is a plant with a plastic carry bag as the flower pot. The branches of the plant are adorned by egg shells. This image delivers more than one level of meaning. At first glance this is an usual interior scene of an urban middle class home related to the aesthetic sense of a house wife and parallel to the design on the night gown which reminds us of a vast repertoire of feminine art activities in our tradition such as wall paintings, ritual drawings, textile designs etc. A second thought, however, may provoke us to a more subtle level of meaning related to the creative power it self. The image of the plant in the carry bag is, here, construed to mean the binary opposite to the image of the female. The plant in the black plastic carry bag and the egg shells signify a disaster which may be unavoidable for the life on the Earth in the not too distant future. This painting can be seen, thus, operating through the possibilities of binaries such as the universal mother /the lady of the household and birth/death. The painting balances two forces of creation which is capable of endless manifestations and the ultimate destruction of these manifestations.

In paintings no:2 ,we again see a female figure in her night gown against the background of a kitchen. The night gown achieves a unique role in this pristine iconographic concept by enabling the artist representing the female of the species in a general way and in a historical context as this dress has attained a popular status, subverting all social class differences among contemporary women. The plates and the kitchen shelf which form a halo around the head of the female figure have a distant relationship with the crowns of the renowned performing art forms of Kerala such as Theyyam. Theyyams are human beings elevated to the position of the god. Here once again the female figure becomes a mother goddess with the bitter gourd and the glass of water on her hands which connotes sexuality and birth.

Suvarna, through her paintings try to realize her feminine identity which is deep rooted in the concept of procreation or the mother hood. At the same time she is aware of the historic evolutions through which the female archetype passes on. Without relying on the readymade repertoire of legendary images of femininity, Suvarna presents a re-vision of the mythical female. Not only the dress but the postures and gestures are not with in an already given format. On the other hand, they seem to be derived from the confrontation of the artist with a specific historical context. The whole artistic endeavor, here, becomes a cognitive process where the personal and the universal or the subject and the object unites.