Depicting women struggles on canvas

Delhi-based artist Renuka Sondhi Gulati is showcasing her latest artwork ‘Soaring Beyond’ at Kalakriti Art Gallery. Looking at the ongoing art exhibition, one could definitely say that she has become a person who has successfully fused the public and private selves into one. 

In her work, one can see the vigorous negotiations between spaces, a evaluation on the technological and emotional submission of women by the socio-economic forces, the external spaces of self-assertion and the internal spaces of contemplation and reconciliation.

Renuka paints to exist and sculpts to underline her existence. Her works vivify the journey of a woman from birth to death undergoing all pangs of aging and feeling the bliss of maturity and captures how a woman becomes a multitasker when she exists within the society, family and above all in history. 

She has had 9 solo shows and participated in 39 Group Shows and received 14 awards, nationally and internationally. Recently, she was awarded the ‘Gurugram Gaurav Samman Award’ for exemplary work done by her for propagating awareness in the field of visual arts among masses. She has also presented her sculpture to the President of India in a function of Global Clubfoot Conference at Vigyan Bhawan recently.

While Renuka as an artist employs the image of an eagle as a symbol of feminine freedom, ambition and ability to fly high, she very skilfully brings forth her own self as well as a surrogate self and attributes them with a sort of iconic nature.

‘Soaring High Through Her Vision’ is another work where the presence of a neck scarf worn by young executives in the job sector makes the newer roles of women in the contemporary society. Perhaps they are tied down by the noose around their necks as the jobs demand, but they have all the freedom to fly high using their newly found economic and social freedom.

The two works that almost appear as the manifesto of the artist are titled as ‘In My Dreams’ and ‘My Roots in My Country’. As mentioned earlier, the protagonists are in a creative slumber. In the former work, the female protagonist is on a happy structure which no longer has the pain of the bed of arrows as experienced by Bheeshma in Mahabharata. 

Sleeping among the clouds, like the Lake District Poet, she sees the vision of creations with eyes closed. The same contentment and happy face we witness in the latter work where the woman is seen sleeping under a Banyan tree depicts the tree of enlightenment.

What makes this work intriguing and specifically bold is the artist’s daring to make her protagonist sleep under the Banyan tree, snatching the right to enlightenment from the male hands and also daring to sleep under a tree like a mendicant devoid of the fear of theft or molestation. It is a sort of reclaiming the spaces for herself and for all the women in the world.

 Taking a cue from the changing times and the moods of the country, Renuka has emphasised her love for the motherland. According to the artist, the empowerment of the country has a lot to do with the empowerment of women and she is ready to go by the present day mainstream discourse of patriotism and she does find it as a morale booster for the artist in her. 

In the sculptures, she emphasises how important it is to believe in the ideological apparatuses like family and society and to conform to the given.

She affirms her indebtedness to her country and family and celebrates it in her works uncritically. Onlookers could resort to the poetic understanding of her works through a willing suspension of disbelief, and Renuka Sondhi Gulati is an artist of our times who would stand for the country and the family, come whatever may. 

What: Soaring Beyond
Where: Kalakriti Art Gallery
Time: Until April 17 from 11 am to 7 pm