Still from Aditi Aggarwal’s “Dream 1”
Boundaries and borders exist in many distinct yet overlapping ways: physical, emotional, psychological, cultural, and societal. When artist, educator, and longtime Glasstire writer Colette Copeland was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Research Award for 2023/2024, she began her journey to research and write about female contemporary artists in India whose practices were interdisciplinary, conceptual, and socially engaged. From 2023 to 2024, Copeland traveled to India on three separate occasions. At her host organization, the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, she taught several workshops in anthotypes and performance art whilst building personal relationships with numerous artists as she explored their practice.
Her Fulbright research culminated in the thoughtfully curated show Traversing Boundaries: 12 Contemporary Female Artists of India, which debuted at SPIN Gallery at the University of Texas at Dallas from January 24 to March 1, 2025.
Krithika Sriram, “Booklet of Banned Objects”
“I asked each artist to interpret their work within the larger thematic framework of borders and boundaries — physical, emotional, real, imagined, geographic, virtual, convergent, divergent and/or transformative. During my conversations and interviews with the artists, other themes emerged, including gender oppression, family history, labor, urban development, and environmental issues,” says Copeland. “The exhibition is not meant to be a comprehensive survey, but a small glance into the rich and vibrant work made today that speaks out against human injustices, challenging societal traditions and providing much-needed awareness and dialogue towards positive change for the future.”
When entering the gallery, you are first greeted with a stack of black booklets laid out neatly on a pedestal: they read “Booklet of Banned Objects.” Each page portrays a different object being interacted with by the body. The artist, Krithika Sriram, chose each object based on its connection with the historical and ongoing oppression of the Dalit — the lowest level of the castes in India — community, exploring the reclaiming and redefining of these objects alongside the act of “touching.” There is a distinct intimacy in the act of picking up one of the small booklets and peering inside, flipping each page to reveal another politically charged, everyday object. And Sriram isn’t the only artist in the exhibition to address the mistreatment of marginalized groups through material culture.
Still from “Janeu Prompts”
Jyotsna Siddharth addresses caste-based and sexual violence through a series of performances titled Janeu Prompts, which plays on a loop via a wall-mounted screen. Although each performance features a different location — along some train tracks, amongst a shroud of trees, or inside a parking garage — Siddharth has the same prop in each video: a long piece of string known as a Janeu. “[Janeu is] a sacred thread worn by upper caste Hindu men that signals pervasive practices of Brahmanical patriarchy,” explains the artist. “I use my body in juxtaposition to the Janeu to subvert and transform the body from a site of violence to a site of dissent, resistance, and assertion.” In each of the four videos, Siddharth engages in a ritual with the thread; the rhythmic and repetitive gestures create an eerie undertone. Each video ends with text from news reports detailing a specific incident of violence that did not result in justice, typically due to the complicity of law enforcement.
Activist and conceptual artist Mallika Das Sutar critiques the greed and corruption present within India’s current political climate, which she calls a “repressive, dogmatic regime” in her two video loops titled Ashwasbani and NO U Turn. In one of the video collages, which depict three obscured, headless statues of women within a single frame, Sutar evokes a sense of apathy and discomfort, feelings akin to what is so often directed toward women.
Moutushi Chakraborty, “Homeland 6,” 2018, collage and acrylic on Fabriano, 11 x 9 inches
Some of the artists look to historical and personal events as a method to protest current-day exploitation, violence, and discrimination. Dancer and choreographer Shruti Ghosh’s solo performance piece titled Khol Do depicts the horrors and violence of the partition — the division of British India into the independent countries of India and Pakistan in 1947 — focusing on the violence against women during one of the largest instances of displacement in history. Ghosh’s performance and embodiment of a woman migrating by train is both entrancing and haunting. The performance, which she has performed over 300 times, is based on a short story by Saadat Hassan Manto of the same title.
Moutushi Chakraborty’s Homeland Series consists of multimedia collages embellished with block prints of tapestry patterns. The series explores the history of families, touching on ideas of displacement and memory through the lens of the “home.” Compositionally, her collages depict the families removed from their dwellings, cropping them in a way that feels uncomfortable or perhaps restricting.
Installation view of “Museum of Absence”
In the center of the gallery is Museum of Absence, an installation by Bangalore-based artist Avnit Singh. Composed of snippets of stories dangling above empty vitrines, Singh’s installation touches on themes of preservation and remembrance and how those ideas are tied to objects and materiality. Part of the artist’s practice is gathering stories — collecting the bits and pieces of memories from others. “This is about the passing of days, in the train of time; it is about the inability to capture that air from that window,” states Singh. “It is about all those memories, which can not be seen but can be felt. It is about all the memories in the world which were not documented.” The vacant cases may highlight the things that have been lost or the memories that cannot be contained. To me, it is an empty archive.
Across from Museum of Absence are three photographs by Aditi Aggarwal that take a much different approach to archiving. In an attempt to capture the layers of time that are constantly in motion, overlapping and intersecting, Aggarwal creates futuristic, imagined landscapes where timelines diverge and reality is in question. “I attempt to capture the noise, speed, time, and duration of the urban experience in my works,” says the artist. “The process involved is free association, abstracting both time and space, articulating spaces of both anxiety and dysfunction.” Within these dystopian worlds, Aggarwal is the lone witness to the chaos that unfolds.
Keerti Pooja, “Locating Memories,” 2022
Gracing another wall in the gallery are the soft watercolor and gouache paintings of Keerti Pooja, whose practice also seeks to capture untold stories, fleeting life, and forgotten conversations. This particular series details hands holding flowers, likely those of a flower seller, highlighting the invisible labor of the working class. Although there is incredible detail in the hands, the arms of the person and the flowers they hold look unfinished. Each of Pooja’s paintings appear to be fading away the longer you stare at them, ever more transient as they near the parameters of the paper they exist upon. “As the freshness of the flowers fade away with time, the soft fragrance of the mogra lingers in the streets for a while, so is the journey of life,” writes the artist.
Still from “River of Faith: Ritual,” 2023
A handful of the artists in the exhibition address environmental issues in their work. India is the world’s second-most polluted country, with issues of air pollution, water pollution, and waste management causing millions of deaths each year.
When I stood in front of Pooja Bahri’s performance videos, I was immediately in awe of the landscape that surrounded her. It looked as if she was standing in a sea of small icebergs or fallen clouds. Discovering that that magical white foam was actually sewage was a startling revelation. “I stand at the confluence of reverence and neglect – The Yamuna River,” says the artist. “A sacred lifeline now bears the brunt of human neglect.” In the performance, Bahri dresses in all black while pouring sindoor (red powder that typically adorns a woman during wedding ceremonies) over her face and head. The river itself, which is used for drinking and bathing water and is the site for many religious ceremonies, is now a toxic wasteland. In the artist’s words: “This work invites contemplation on our roles as custodians of cultural heritage and environmental well-being.”
Still from “Of Time and Space”
On another screen is Parvathi Nayar’s video trilogy Of Time and Space, a short film using objects such as mirrors, a compass, and miniature furniture, which distorts our perception of scale and space. The sounds of a ticking clock alongside the circular, mechanical motion of the light signals the inevitable passage of time. The use of the spotlight and the shadows creates spatial depth within this seemingly architectural, abstract world. The backdrop to this miniature scene is an intricate, detailed graphite drawing of contaminated water molecules. “Ecological crises and water are a (sub)liminal theme in my work,” writes the artist. “The language of science is one entry-point into these films; another is our experience of time as urgent and apocalyptic in today’s world.”
In a series of photographs by artist and designer Vamika Jain, religious sites are depicted alongside humorous interventions by the artist: a sign in the background riffing on the famous Hollywood sign, police tape closing off a site, a no trespassing sign. These interventions question the commodification of India’s holy sites for the sake of capitalism and tourism. Here, Jain calls attention to the motivation for the “perfect picture” and the subliminal intentions behind the tourist’s gaze.
Still from “Mera Kamra I (My Room I)”
The last artwork in the show is in a slightly closed-off room at the back of the gallery. Interdisciplinary artist Janhavi Khemka’s experimental installation, Mera Kamra I (My Room I), is composed of animation, sound, performance, and vibratory material. The work is an homage to the artist’s late mother; because Khemka was born hearing impaired, her mother taught her how to read lips. Animation deriving from her woodcut prints is projected on the walls; surrealist motifs of water droplets — representing rain or tears — and talking mouths dance across the walls alongside depictions of familiar objects like her medicine cabinet and bathroom sink growing up. In the center of the space is a low platform with a projection of a traditional rug laid across it. The platform vibrates when I lay my hand across it, the percussion acting as a form of communication when lipreading fails in the age of COVID masks. While the work is deeply personal to Khemka, it also explores navigating the world as someone with a disability, prompting visitors to reflect on their own identity and the assumptions that exist there.
A medley of noises from each video work wafts throughout the space, creating a distinct energy that pulses through the air. Each artwork is a beautiful companion to the others; together, they build a complex narrative highlighting the boundaries that exist in India today and the efforts by women artists to fight back and overcome.
Emma S. Ahmad is a writer based in Dallas, TX.
Traversing Boundaries: 12 Contemporary Female Artists of India debuted at SPIN Gallery at the University of Texas at Dallas from January 24 to March 1, 2025.
