[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”RGBA(255,255,255,0)” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” custom_margin=”||59px|||” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n
In her catalogue essay for a landmark exhibition of \u201cIndian Women Artists\u201d presented jointly by NGMA and Gallery Espace (April, 1997), art curator and historian Gayatri Sinha explores the notion of gender and feminine experience, through a potent philosophical formation \u2013 \u201cThe Self\u201d and \u201cThe World\u201d. This dynamic \u2013 a reassessment of the ways in which the individual self forms a relationship with the world \u2013 became the inspiration for the current edition. In a time of great upheaval and the unravelling of certainties, as the politics of gender and sexuality dominates the discursive space in the country, this positioning allows us to interrogate how art and creative practice could nuance ways of thinking about self-fashioning, self-making, self-identification, perception, association, and \u201cbeing\u201d in<\/i><\/em>\u00a0the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n In their critique of the recent Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill<\/u><\/a><\/span>, NCTP members Rituparna Neog and Kalki Subramaniam, who resigned from their posts in protest, called<\/u><\/a><\/span>\u00a0the amendment\u00a0\u201ca step backward for our fundamental rights to self-identification and dignity\u201d. The bill that was hastily rushed through parliament has drawn criticism from all quarters, since it fundamentally alters the definition of \u201ctransgender\u201d. By limiting the definition to biology and physical traits, and certain socio-historical communities, the state has upended the progress made in the politics of self-determination and self-perception, and dealt a blow to human dignity. Activists, lawyers, artists, and intellectuals have been vocal in their critique of this move by the state.<\/p>\n It has been close to four decades since American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler\u2019s influential conception of \u201cperformativity\u201d destabilised biologically determined sex by showing how gender as a category is socially constructed \u2013 \u201cwoman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.\u201d (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity<\/i><\/em>, 1990). Her arguments were foundational in formulating queer theory, and questioning notions of heteronormativity that ring through the recent amendment, where the state puts a wedge between the self, and the world, by legislating processes of medical certification, naming, and criminalisation. But Butler\u2019s \u201cperformativity\u201d is more than performance. Turning to J.L. Austin\u2019s compelling 1955 lecture series, How to Do things with Words<\/i><\/em>, we see how language is not restricted to speech \u2013 how, very often the very act of \u201cutterance\u201d brings a thing into being, by constituting it. \u00a0Austin proposes the concept of \u201cperformative utterance\u201d as \u201cnot, or not merely, saying something but doing something<\/i><\/em>, as not a true or false report of something.<\/i><\/em>\u201d As a \u201cperformative utterance\u201d, the amendment actively constructs the reality of transpersons thrusting entire communities of people into precarity under the guise of \u201cprotecting\u201d them.<\/p>\n Can we think of the work of art \u2013 aggregated through practice, social and historical construction \u2013 as a \u201cperformative utterance\u201d? If gendered identity is a form of self-expression, can the work of art speculate and constitute realities of being and relating that subvert regressive and limiting \u201cdefinitions\u201d? Is not the act of curation of close readings of such artworks a powerful shaping of reality \u2013 an act of world-making?<\/p>\n To curate and read<\/i><\/em>\u00a0these, and extend the reading to multiple contemporary works, that through their imaginative composition gender <\/i><\/em>lived experience, and locate their performative utterances in an evolving socio-historical moment, is to formulate a fluid, speculative, and expressive bridge between the \u201cself\u201d and the \u201cworld\u201d.<\/p>\n Sinha articulates the need to \u201cestablish\/ acknowledge the woman artist as a \u2018speaking subject\u2019\u201d. Through the current edition, we mark this contentious moment by revitalising the speaking subject\u2019s speech<\/i><\/em>\u00a0\u2013 their art, and practice \u2013 as \u00a0more than pronouncement, argument, or expression; we read the works of women artists, and queer artists as \u201cperformative utterances\u201d that shape and change reality.<\/p>\n The attempt is not simply to speak, but to do <\/i><\/em>gender.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Through a series of letters between friends, Aparna Chivukula <\/b><\/strong>and Stuti Bhavsar\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong>The Self and the World<\/i><\/u><\/em>\u00a0: Dialogues on Art and Friendship<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>analyses some works from the exhibition in conversation with Nine Indian Women Poets<\/i><\/em>,\u00a0<\/i><\/em>an anthology of poetry published in the same year, and edited by Eunice De Souza. The epistolary form opens up the reading of relationship and parallel practice, through a reflexive mould. \u00a0A set of four \u201carticles\u201d in this edition push the boundaries of creative practice, and the formal collision of text and image. These are series of poems that write into and beyond, the work of art. Each of the poets chose artworks by a single artist, verbing the image into language, making it their own through poetry. Greeshma Gayatri\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0Before They Came to Humans<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong>responds to artworks by Rashmimala, Kunjana Parashar\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0Available Light<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>responds to\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>artworks by Manisha Gera Baswani, Nikita Deshpande\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0City of Shard and Smoke<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>responds to artworks by Soghra Khurasani, and Aranya Padil\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0Babel of Broken Pencil Points<\/u><\/a>\u00a0responds to artworks by Shilpa Gupta. This set of works is experimental, proposing poetry as a means of creative engagement with art, outside of the contours of traditional \u201cekphrasis\u201d, \u201ccritical analysis\u201d or \u201cart writing\u201d. Nachiket Joshi\u2019s<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0commentary<\/u><\/a>\u00a0explores two exhibitions that form Nancy Adajania\u2019s \u201ccuratorial diptych\u201d of women artists from the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0and 21st <\/sup>Centuries. In The Language of Lines: Breaking Out the Body<\/u><\/a>, Carol Blaizy D\u2019Souza<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0sets off an in interrogation of beauty, and explores ways in which the body, and the ordinary, are rendered in a language of difference and juxtaposition through the works of Mayuri Chari and Priya Sebastian. In At the Crossroads : Contemporary Artistic Practices in Ladakh<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0Sudeshna Rana<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0revisits the question of \u201ccontemporary\u201d Ladakhi Art through an exploration of artists including Jigmet Angmo, Skarma Sonam Tashi, Anuja Dasgupta, and Tsetan Angmo among others. In Organic Monumentality: Latika Katt and the Ecologies of Form<\/u><\/a>, Nainvi Vora<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0explores how \u201cabstraction becomes a mode of ecological thinking\u201d, arguing that Latika Katt\u2019s sculptures, writing, and practice expand the very ground of what is traditionally understood as \u201cmodernism\u201d. Roma Chatterjee<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0writes about \u201cMemory, Loss, and the Ageing Body\u201d<\/u><\/a>\u00a0by historically locating artist Anoli Parera\u2019s artistic voice amidst aesthetic and social movements and fraught political histories of Sri Lanka. Zeenat Nagree<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0reflects on <\/u>Sayan Chanda\u2019s \u201ctapestries\u201d<\/u><\/a>. \u00a0She shows how these works use myth and ritual to \u201cdistill the culture of worship around a little known goddess in the Sundarbans, into sculptural form\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0In Poetics of the Ordinary<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Mansi Jain and Dev Nath Pathak<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0argue that Nandini Chirimar\u2019s practice foregrounds the poetics of everyday life. They show how her aesthetic approach wields ordinary objects as carriers of memory, identity and emotional resonance. Joshua Muyiwa<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0reassesses<\/u><\/a>\u00a0Mandeep Reikhy\u2019s A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae <\/i><\/em>and the trajectory of his early works to foreground how \u201cpolitics must<\/i><\/em>\u00a0power the physical expression\u201d. His essay critically engages with the politics of queerness, and lived experience, in both contemporary dance practice, and criticism. Spriha Gupta<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0performs a kind<\/i><\/em>\u00a0of \u2018archaeology\u2019 in A Kind of Blue<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>by tracing the varied trajectories of stone, material, and method, in the use of Lapiz Lazuli across the ages. She traverses \u201cnetworks of exchange\u201d and \u201cmovements of knowledge\u201d both geographic and temporal, in a compelling history of colour. Georgina Maddox<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0takes a long view<\/u><\/a>\u00a0of the artwork of Sunil Gupta and Chitra Ganesh, two diaspora artists whose articulations of queer existence foreground a compelling range of aesthetic and socio-political concerns. She reflects on their practice, curating some of her own writings, and responses over the last two decades.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n We invite you to join us in this adventure, through our curation. We wait for you at the shore, as you wade slowly through the waters of this edition, and enter into a dialogue that activates a bridge of expression between \u201cThe Self & the World\u201d.<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/The-Self-and-the-world-Catalogue-Cover-1-scaled.jpg” title_text=”The Self and the world Catalogue Cover” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”400px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_button button_url=”https:\/\/artsolve.dev\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/The-Self-and-the-World-Web.pdf” url_new_window=”on” button_text=”View PDF” button_alignment=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In her catalogue essay for a landmark exhibition of \u201cIndian Women Artists\u201d presented jointly by NGMA and Gallery Espace (April, 1997), art curator and historian Gayatri Sinha explores the notion of gender and feminine experience, through a potent philosophical formation \u2013 \u201cThe Self\u201d and \u201cThe World\u201d. This dynamic \u2013 a reassessment of the ways in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":1293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"Catalogue for \"The Self & The World: An Exhibtion of Indian Women Artists\" (1997, NGMA, New Delhi)","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[30],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1470,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}