Gender inequality and oppression are often either glossed over or treated as ordinary, having become a part of day-to-day reality. Behind the apparent perfection of the families, community and society lies silence, hysteria, pained acquiescence or simply the numbing of spirits of countless women. The marginalisation of women and their voices raise larger questions of the search of an

alternate, more equal world and the re-visioning of the feminine. Award winning writer Ajeet Cour known for her absolutely fearless writing, stands out as a unique voice. She exemplifies the strong, independent and courageous woman who speaks out about her own struggles within an oppressive middle class family structure while expanding her narrative to include women from across different spaces, communities and religions and extending her critique to social inequality and violence in all its forms.

This exhibition Weaving Water: Feminine Countercultures in Paint and Print explores the weaving of text and art focussing on how eminent women artists engage with the lived experiences of women and their day-to-day struggles as well as societal oppression. It is anchored in Ajeet Cour’s Weaving Water: An Autobiography that was published over forty years ago and won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985 and was subsequently translated into various languages. The exhibition brings this text into dialogue with the visual expressions of leading woman artists of India. These women artists explore issues of gender inequality, and envision alternate spaces for expressing agency and the feminine which is not mediated by masculinist ideologies. The exhibition aims to foreground the works of eminent women artists alongside Ajeet Cour’s feminist and uncompromising text.

• Jyoti A Kathpalia