Nayika

Feminist art historian Elinor W. Gadon writes that ‘artists like Gogi Saroj Pal have used the artistic and literary convention of the nayika bhed (the heroine) and its rendition in Pahari paintings to subversively show up its stifling role-playing, rendering the nayika a figure of parody’. In this oil titled Nayika, from the eponymous series that she executed intermittently in the 1990s, the artist gives an unnatural twist to the body of the nayika or heroine—not necessarily of films but of everyday life—who has to bend over backwards to succeed in roles ascribed to her by society.