A dream-like painting by Rekha Rodwittiya, revealing her subversive, feminist practice
Made in 1994, this painting is representative of the shift in Rodwittiya's work from the more allegorical concerns to navigating concerns of patriarchal subjugation through monumental female protagonists who feature in her works as iconic figures.
| Story Text | [{"record_id":"0","storytext":"Rekha Rodwittiya (b. 1958) is a feminist artist associated with the Baroda School. Graduating in 1982, her practice has been influenced by the School\u2019s strong figurative tradition. Trained under stalwarts of the Baroda Fine Arts College like K. G. Subramanyam, Jyoti Bhatt, Nasreen Mohamedi and others, Rodwittiya\u2019s work is influenced by Baroda artists from the 70s but is also distinctly individual in its navigation of gender politics, histories of violence, and discrimination\u2014all of which is explored through a prism of personal experiences. \r\n\r\nMade in 1994, this painting is representative of the shift in her work from the more allegorical concerns to navigating concerns of patriarchal subjugation through monumental female protagonists who feature in her works as iconic figures. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"1","storytext":"Rekha Rodwittiya\u2019s works provide potent form to the feminine experience, seeking to challenge patriarchal conditions and histories through female bodied protagonists who carry within them both the legacies of trauma and the trajectories of hope. She has always, in no uncertain terms, claimed her work as personal and political\u2014her work is an extension of the politics of her existence as a woman. The iconicity of her figures draws from the personal experiences that become collective through the mechanisms of patriarchal and subjugating systems. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"2","storytext":"Line and colour are crucial elements in her pictorial language and provide an insight into the development and deployment of her visual vocabulary. The vibrant colour palette of her works is informed by cultural traditions. She recalls the tutelage of Jyoti Bhatt at Baroda which helped her bridge contemporary image making with folk traditions of art practice. It is perhaps this exposure that she builds upon as her usage of line and colour provide vitality to her elemental figures. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"3","storytext":"The colour palette, with the woman\u2019s orange toned skin, her yellow dress, and black hair is almost reminiscent of Paul Gauguin but Rodwittiya disavows any further resemblance through her potent lines simplifying the body\u2019s form which visually vitalises the figure. The monumentality of her figures, in this work and others, often dwarf surrounding objects and settings. She places these iconic figures with a force that allows them to assert a claim to space. The arresting protagonists demand the attention of the viewer, positioned as an edifice that endures. \u2018My protagonist is always the woman who holds her Shakti<\/I>\u2019, as Rodwittiya says.","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"4","storytext":"Rodwittiya\u2019s brushstrokes gently whip up a tempest of waves which flows in from the cloud above the mystical river of dreams, creating a sense of movement. The colour palette markedly becomes cooler, as the bright red darkens and flows into the blue. Rodwittiya has often used her art as a space to corporealize and give physical form to her psyche\u2014the space that her characters inhabit are imbued with the politics and experience of her own existence. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"5","storytext":"This folding screen, placed diagonally, creates a visual rift in the composition. It is a barrier between the warm toned space of the interior where a woman carries on with a quotidian domestic task, and the cool toned blues, greens, and browns that flow on the left. The folding screen is an interesting choice of object since Rodwittiya herself has used wooden screens as a medium, and screens are also a medium associated with another notable Baroda artist, Nilima Sheikh.","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"6","storytext":"The screen houses the truncated figure of an unclothed woman who is with child. Both her depictions of the female body remove the palpable corporeality and almost diagrammatises them with exaggerated features and strong lines. The female body depicted as such, even unclothed, refuses to be sexualised as an object for the male gaze and instead asserts its power to create life and energy. She gazes directly at the viewer with one-eye looking upside down, diagonally opposite the face of the woman who gazes listlessly at her task. Their faces diagonally juxtaposed in opposite directions creates a sense of duality as if these faces were the manifestation of two directions. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"7","storytext":"Rekha Rodwittiya\u2019s interest in objects as metaphors and allegories is evident in her ouevre. She does not however insist on ascribing specific meanings, choosing instead to rely upon the motifs in her pictorial lexicon to faithfully convey her larger intent while leaving space for interpretation. The crumpled paper boat and the toy horse are recognisable symbols of childhood, associated with innocent joy and vitality that permeates, or should permeate, one\u2019s youth. Instead, they exist in this seeming state of suspended temporality. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"8","storytext":"Thick green vines with colourful flowers seem to be sprouting from the folding screen, on the other side of which lies the pregnant woman. For Rodwittiya, the female body is an archive of trauma and the history of violence but it also a site of hope and nurture\u2014it is the vessel for life-giving energy, or shakti<\/i>. The growth of lush flora beside the reclining woman is as vibrant a sign of life as the swell of the life growing within her. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"9","storytext":"The grains suspended mid-air create a dynamism that disrupts the stillness of the background. The seemingly banal task of threshing rice grains visually resonates with the moving waves at the woman\u2019s back through the cool blue tones and the collective shape that the grains form, mirroring the repetitive flow of both the waves and the threshed grains. ","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"10","storytext":"The image of harvesting and gleaning offers an opportunity to look back at one\u2019s choices critically and learn from the past, a practice that is often hijacked by the presence of tradition. As she puts it, \u2018I use the metaphor of the woman who is threshing the rice grains as the idea of harvest\u2014the idea of what you remove and what you keep\u2019.","initialize":"true"},{"record_id":"11","storytext":"Rodwittiya sees her work as an exploration of her own process of empowerment and emancipation. Her work probes into shared histories of discrimination and subjugation and through her characters she provides a receptacle of new meanings so her viewers may explore the politics of their own existence.","initialize":"true"}] |
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