German artist highlights gender issues in India in solo show

German artist Katharina Kakar explores various issues faced by Indian women like gender equality, violence, rape as well as public and individual space in her debut solo exhibition.
'Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha: Shakti, Sensuality, Sexuality', on at the India Habitat Centre here till November 30, includes 16 drawings, 22 wall hangings and 16 installations.
"This exhibition deals with women and their sensuality and also the violence and constrains that women have to face in India. These are issues which are very close to my heart," Kakar told PTI.
The Germany-born artist moved to India in 2003 with her husband, renowned writer and psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar, to settle down in Goa. Katha, as she is fondly known, is now bringing forth her own understanding of Indian society in this show.

"I live in India and it is my home and I relate to it in many different ways so I felt it is important to continue this debate not only through writing but through art to address the subject that is in my opinion very important," she says.
The writer-cum-artist also experiments with a wide range of materials for her installations like pepper and chillies, cloves and coconuts, wax and clay, fish and ash, perfume and paint and even impressions of her own body parts.

"This particular installation which keeps with the theme of the exhibition 'Crossing the Lakshmana Rekha' is a huge floor installation which consists of about 400 human body parts. These are parts of my own body; I moulded them in wax and used pigments so they look like mutilated cut-off body parts. I addressed the issue of public and private space through this," she says.

This installation consists of a large circle, approximately three metres in diameter, filled with rose petals surrounded by several hundred distorted wax body parts. The installation mainly refers to women's vulnerability in public space.
"It was no coincidence that the crossing of the Lakshmana Rekha was quoted so often by politicians after the Nirbhaya rape case. Not only are women made partly responsible for violence happening to them, but they are also pushed back into private, controllable space and role expectations.
One of her installations depicts the Nirbhaya case. It is
a floor installation of wooden items from a traditional metal workshop and copper rod. Through the installation, Kakar portrays the ongoing disrespect and aggression towards women who cross into public space, which in India is culturally "male space", is addressed here.

"I have made a piece which relates to the Nirbhaya case which is called - December 26, 2012. It looks like spread legs in a kind of abstract way. People across the world know India as a 'rape country' which is not true."
Memory of the Future (Missing Girls) is another installation, a three-piece one. The first is made of copper cylinder, bronze skulls, burnt clay; the second a wall hanging of 144 wax skulls in a golden frame and the third an artificial butterfly in a jar that starts moving when the copper lid of the jar is tapped.

"With this installation, I relate to the issue of missing girls. The gender gap in Indian society does not only reflect the preference of sons through selective abortion of female fetuses, but is also caused through neglect, such as less medical attention or less food for daughters in comparison to sons," rues Kakar.
Other installations which explore the various feelings of a woman from shakti to sexual emotions like Unheard, Desire and Shakti Peeth are wall hangings in copper; Sense of A Woman, a series of drawings dealing with women's sensuality and sexual desires; Screw You!, an installation of reddish-purple female heads, made of wax, shiny copper nails driven into them like into voodoo dolls and others.

According to Kakar, India is a country of tolerance and diversity and people will always stand up for it.
"I think it is very important that people speak up and give back their awards, make it public that India has a tradition of tolerance and diversity. I feel there no need to shrink liberal space or push people who have certain ideas about life in a certain corner. India is a big enough that there is space for all of us.
"What is more important for us is that we talk to each other and communicate and make ourselves understood instead of pointing fingers at people. Indian politics should definitely strive on that history of tolerance, communication and diversity," she says.