Feminist Geographies: On Indu Antony’s Practice

Working around communal vocabularies, social justice and public access, Bengaluru-based Indu Antony’s artistic practice is imbued with a feminist understanding of space and body. During the talk “The Power of Art” organised at the recently concluded India Art Fair 2022 held in New Delhi, Artists-in-Residence Indu Antony and Haroun Hayward presented their works on site and virtually, respectively. Antony spoke about two of her projects in particular: Cecilia’ed and Namma Katte, with regard to creating a “feminist geography” (Pamela Moss) in practice.

Cecilia’ed, which received support from the FICA Public Art Grant 2018, went through several iterations in enabling perspectival shifts around public sites, all revolving around the eponymous figure. Living a flamboyant life with, and despite, daily encounters in poverty and precarity, Cecilia is a 76-year-old woman who poses for Antony in a series of portraits, staged in her house and in her own eccentric clothes. The images have become visual anchors for the project, as roads previously deemed unsafe for women were re-inaugurated, LED lights installed across dark streets and merchandise (such as zines, stickers, dolls and matchboxes featuring Cecilia’s images) were circulated en masse.

The spectacle of re-opening a street with new meaning and awareness was specifically effective in creating the said shift in perception, as the event provoked certain questions. The space could now be inhabited by women with a renewed sense of hope and confidence. The process around this change called for engagement with government authorities and civic bodies in Bengaluru, as well through the medium of petitions and formal conversations directed towards logistical alterations. Cecilia, thus, became a collaborator in a project aimed at parsing out spaces of presence for women in their daily lives at a point when their absence had become a direct result of threat to their well-being. Change was therefore activated in the space before it began to affect the inhabiting bodies.

Namma Katte is an extension of this impulse towards creating safe community spaces in cities for women. Roughly translated into “Our Space” in Kannada, Namma Katte was designed as a space of leisure for women, welcoming them—as well as their children—to “sit, chill, talk, sing, gossip, scratch and scream”. Located in Lingarajapuram, Bengaluru, Antony’s work with Namma Katte is part of Mindscapes Bengaluru, a mental-health programme run by the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust in London. As opposed to spaces by the road, such as chai stalls—that act as pockets of leisure for men—the concept of leisure for women among middle and lower-middle class Bengaluru was always associated with the domestic space, and hence, away from public sight. Namma Katte is a corner shop away from “home,” designed with shutters that open out on the road. The women who come to the space stitch intimate stories (mostly about domestic violence) on pieces of fabric using a needle and thread. There is no pressure to perform or produce, however, and one could choose to not share anything about themselves in the space either. The site has been subject to much speculation amongst the local male population, with one man even barging in and burning a fabric that bore his reference. On such occasions, handling the situation tactfully while standing her ground becomes necessary for Antony. In the same vein, the space encourages conversations with men who express scepticism towards its premise, thus extending its scope to enable personal reflection beyond the mandates of mass-driven opinions.

Trained as a medical professional, Antony works on community projects that aim to create spaces for women that are not encumbered by extant hetero-patriarchal constraints. Exploring how public spaces respond to gendered bodies, she is aware of her gaze as an outsider. She takes care to only aid—and not take over—the voices intended to be visibilised. Imbued with a sensitivity of perception, the projects issue from spaces of discomfort and create spaces of safety cultivated through shared intention, collective action and material ephemera that serve to both document and enable such impulses.

To read more about the work of Indu Antony, please click here.