“MAP Museum of Art and Photography will open its doors to the public in Bangalore, the capital city of South India, on Saturday 18 February 2023.
The opening exhibition, Visible/Invisible: Representation of Women in Art Through the MAP Collection, explores the paradox of how visible women are in Indian art over the ages and yet how invisible they seem in the public domain.
The exhibition’s Curator and Director of MAP, Kamini Sawhney, said: “For centuries, while women have been one of the central themes of artistic representation, the image builders have largely been male, allowing women very little agency over the nature of their representation. In the Nationalist struggle against colonial rule, India appropriated the defining image of a woman as the mother to symbolise the country. The body of the woman and the geography of the nation were identified as one. It is disturbing to see, today, that while the performing arts, literature, activism and the feminist movement in India reflect changing perceptions and attitudes, the language of visual culture has not shifted the bar as far as it needs to.”