All things feminine

Among the works on display are Miss Tree where ghungroos evoke the Goddess of the forest who is only heard, while the Solar Plexus, or Manipura, refers to the third chakra which spins in the area around the abdomen above the belly button

Laal Paar, opening this week at Method gallery in Kala Ghoda, brings together Ritu and Surya Singh of WOLF, a creative team from Jaipur which has used found objects and discards to create art and tell stories for years, and Srila Chatterjee, founder of Baro Market, a creative design store in Mumbai. The show borrows its name from the simple Bengali handwoven white cotton saree with a red border even as its timing coincides with Durga Puja, the celebration of the divine feminine in the state. "It is a marker of sisterhood when women step out clad in it," notes Ritu Singh. She adds that the show celebrates the coming together of feminine energies of healing and nurturing, of honouring feminine voices, and retelling ancient stories of the historical silencing and erasure of women.

Three Days Off, an encouragement to women to honour their moon cycles and go within while its 450 stitched cowries are a reference to the 450 periods an average woman has in her lifetime

"We are in the midst of a feminine awakening. We see it everywhere," say the duo, speaking of a gradual and happy normalising of conversations around previously taboo subjects like menstruation, for instance. WOLF's artistic practice has revolved around the use of scrap, waste and discards, the idea of transformation at its core.

Farmerette which is a tribute to the Varahi, one of the eight Matrikas (Divine Mothers), who is boar-headed and comes with a plough as her weapon

This show features artworks made of buttons, hairpins, ghungroo, cowries, butter churning sticks and more. In its celebration of the feminal universe, the works include elements such as snakes, flowers, spirals and the moon, their underlying ideas being those associated with the feminine such as regeneration, life, consciousness, emotion and intuition. It is also inspired by ancient history, texts, and Sanskrit relics with works containing allusions to Greek poetess Sappho, born in 7th century BC, Draupadi and legends of the Black Madonna which live on in many parts of Europe.

Srila Chatterjee

Ritu's research has brought forward people who have documented the unbroken lineage of female shamanism across Afro-Eurasia, from ancient times to the present. "The continuity of practices, rituals, and artefacts identifying the sacred women who have functioned as religious leaders in their communities...demonstrates direct links between Greek Maenads, Central Asian Amazons, Indo-Tibetan Dakinis and Yoginis, and European Witches. All of these assemblies of women were known for their abilities to fly through the air, heal the sick, resurrect the dead, brew sacred intoxicating fermented beverages [such as soma], and perform sexual and divination practices for which they have been misunderstood, maligned, peripheralised, and demonised in the modern world," says one such researcher.

Surya and Ritu Singh

Chatterjee who has curated Laal Paar, believes that the show marks a new high for WOLF. "I was gobsmacked when I first saw the work," she says, amazed at how richly layered it is. "I love the idea of feminism without it being a cult or a mission, and I applaud how this embraces the feminine in every one of us."

WHAT: Laal Paar
WHERE: Method, Kala Ghoda
WHEN: October 22 onwards