Women Artists from Devi Art Foundation's Collection

'After Partition, it was hard to cross into Pakistan as an Indian citizen. My sister Rani’s letters connected me to the family I had been separated from. '

'In Fourth Letter, Rani writes about leaving her house, now that her children have moved away from their home in Pakistan. With her daughter married and her son studying in the United States, the house felt too large for her husband and her.'

'She ends her letter with, “my little sister, please don’t cry, but when you come to the house it feels like home and I missed you very much when you didn’t visit this spring.”'

Bharti Kher is one of India's most prominent contemporary artists who stepped into the international limelight. Featuring elements of India's society and aesthetic heritage, Kher's works span a wide range of topics and themes, stretching the imaginations of the audience with dramatic stories. 

Kher transforms everyday icons into transgressive figures. For example, the demure or cheerful housewife, the severe or doting mother figure, or the bored or eager socialite may morph into new avatars as ape-woman, sexual predators (a Tigress –in-Boots dominatrix wielding feathery and vinyl tools of her trade), a voluptuous glacial mannequin sporting a hairy tarantula on her hand like a jewel, retro-futuristic space cadets, and were-horse and ape hostesses.

Her female hybrids pose in model-like contrapposto or sit revealing plush curves as their gestures swing between liberation and exhibitionism, perpetually divided, their bodies move inexorably towards other worlds and existence while critiquing our own.

Kher’s works investigates the female body from different perspectives.

Roohi Ahmed lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan. Ahmed teaches at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) in Karachi. She holds MFA from the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. As a multi-disciplinary artist, her work often draws upon cartographical references in order to investigate the ontological realities of human existence in a degenerating political, social and religious environment.

This series of minimalist constructions is composed with large sewing needles fixed on white board. These spare assemblages addresses the tensions and possibilities of Partition with the approach of the linear forms, the juxtapositions and the cartographic references.

In creating her photographs, Iranian artist Shadi Ghadrian borrows antique
traditional Qajar era dresses. She enlisted her sisters and other women in
family and friends to pose in the style of the old photographs. She
constructed a classical 19th century curtained backdrop to emulate the look
and feel of the early photos. 

Ghadrian says 'I decided to add something modern in the old photos,” so i included objects that are “forbidden” or restricted in Iran: a CD player, television, guitar, censored books, beer cans, a bicycle (women are not allowed to ride bikes).'

'They capture women’s interior lives and desires, behind closed doors. The photographs are sandwiched between tradition and modern, past and present, east and west, public and private, reality and fantasy.'

From the Qajar series by Shadi Ghadrian, 2002.

When the notion of the ‘artist’ emerged in the Renaissance, artistic practices arguably became a means for self-expression. Art became a reflection of its maker. As such, most images and objects made by artists now could be considered ‘self-portraits’. Artist, Amber Hammad makes this presence quite literal in her work by inserting herself in the image. 

She becomes the subject of the work, even as her digitally composed prints explore narratives well known around the world.

Maryam, the Arabic name for Mary, recreates the seated Virgin and Child genre that has been the subject of countless paintings, prints and sculptures in the Western world. In Amber Hammad’s work, the story is ‘Islamicized’ and made more relevant to women’s roles in Islamic society today.

The piece Armour Suit for Rani of Jhansi, as the title suggests, is an armour with a skirt, made by using varied materials such as metal, feathers and velvet, amalgamating fact with fiction.

It is a play on the garment like the skirt and the multifaceted personality of the Rani (queen).