Representing Women in Art Through the MAP Collection, the inaugural show examines the contradiction of how women have been represented in Indian art throughout history while still appearing to be almost invisible to the general audience.
What’s it about? On Saturday, February 18, 2023, the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) will welcome visitors to Bengaluru. More than 130 works in various mediums from MAP’s enormous permanent collection are featured, emphasising works from the 20th and 21st centuries.
- The collection is divided into four interrelated narratives: Goddess and Mortal, Sexuality and Desire, Power and Violence, and Struggle and Resistance.
From the Director: According to the exhibition’s curator and director of MAP, Kamini Sawhney, women have been a significant topic in artistic depiction for millennia, but males have historically dominated the image-making process, giving women relatively little control over how they are portrayed. India used the defining image of a woman as the mother to represent the nation in the nationalist battle against colonial control. The map of the country has often been connected with the female body.
- It is alarming to note that while visual culture has not raised the standard as much as it should have, when performing arts, literature, activism, and the feminist movement in India all indicate shifting attitudes and perspectives.
(Image credits: MAPBangalore’s Twitter post)