The Aesthetics of Empowered Womanhood

In a conversation between Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and British-Jamaican novelist Zadie Smith, Adichie reflects on a question she is continually asked: ‘Your female characters are so strong. Why?’ She goes on to muse, ‘I’m writing about women who are familiar. Not to say all the women I know are strong… they’re not. But to say that the idea of a woman being strong – simply being strong, not to prove anything or not to be unusual – is normal to me.’ Adichie understands the need for strength in women without pretence or contrivance, something that Smith elucidates as ‘women who don’t have a moment’s doubt about speaking their mind, who are somehow always themselves.’ The simple, easy, and yet immeasurably powerful phenomenon of women just ‘existing’, unhampered by imposed stereotypes, pretence, or scrutiny, is clearly manifested in Pakistani-American curator Jasmine Wahi’s art exhibition Zabardust.

"Zabardust" has a bursting immediacy that simultaneously affronts and intrigues

Zabardust premiered in early February at Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia, a gallery and nonprofit organization that specializes in South Asian art and displays intellectual handiwork on the progressive margins of society. The unique rhotic title of the exhibition catches the regular passer-by off-guard, for the Urdu word “zabardust” has a bursting immediacy that simultaneously affronts and intrigues, but which is deconstructed by the sheer force of its aesthetic and eclectic flavour. For Urdu-speakers, the term means ‘terrific’ or ‘excellent’, always conveyed in an exclamatory style and never with cursory boredom or indifference. The title of the exhibition is only a microcosm of the show itself, which assembles diverse depictions of women – from majestic Bollywood heroine to pop cultural icon to human rights victim to girl-next-door – and humanizes them, illuminating their essential and abstract personhood.

In a sense, Zabardust vocalizes the untold stories of women forgotten by history or rendered voiceless on the margins of society. Angela Fraleigh’s sensuous, sweeping oil paintings choose as their subject the nude woman lounging in the background of many a painting in Western art history, dominated by the men around her and objectified by the viewer. Fraleigh paints from the vantage point of this minor character, amplifying her perspective with sumptuous colour and lush strokes of oil on canvas.

Similarly, Mata Ruda’s haunting portrait of a Latina – her eyes squeezed shut, her skin matted with blood and dirt, her face tensed in dire anticipation, and the symbolic fish and knife hanging over her head – captures an episode in the life of an undocumented woman. Incisively titled, ‘Six Out of Ten (Women Are Sexually Abused While Crossing the Border)’, the painting shows the daily reality of the undocumented woman worker who is abused and exploited, but without relegating her to the status of a one-dimensional victim or the object of contrived dogma.

The exhibition is about women taking control of their own images and subverting the gaze that constructs them as a dehumanized Other

Indeed, the exhibition is about women taking control of their own images and subverting the objectifying gaze that constructs them as a dehumanized Other – whether that gaze is male, white supremacist, or fundamentalist. Anjali Bhargava’s photographic portraits of South Asian women, excerpted from her ‘UnSuitable Girls’ series, play with popular stereotypes of the oppressed brown woman, attaching a negative superlative to traditional, sanctified titles. This yields the ironic pieces ‘The Least Orthodox Goddess’ and ‘The Least Dutiful Wife.’

Bhargava’s subjects tantalize patriarchal convention by assuming egregious poses in sacrosanct settings. ‘The Least Orthodox Goddess’ portrays a woman sitting atop the marble-white altar of a church, the half-naked, chiselled body of a man lying prone across her lap. ‘The Least Dutiful Wife’ shows a woman lounging on her bed at home, surrounded by towers of books and several teacups that presumably are not for her husband. Bhargava rewards her subjects for subverting the monolithic view of submission when it comes to brown women with physical trophies created by Swati Khurana, which are present in the digital prints. At the crux of Bhargava’s work is the idea of South Asian women reclaiming and asserting agency over their own images, making it even more significant that the artists are women themselves. Wahi, who modelled for ‘The Least Orthodox Goddess’, calls the project a ‘self-elective environment… It’s women-created stuff.’

Maria Berrio’s mixed-media collages continue the theme of gender subversion, albeit in the new light of South American folklore. Her collages ‘I am your earth’ and ‘I am your air’ illustrate children with emblematic infants bundled in verdure on their laps. But the specific genders of the children are not readily apparent, throwing them into esoteric ambiguity and perhaps alluding to pre-colonial gender paradigms. Berrio suffuses ‘I am your air’ with rhinestones, illustrating the transcendence of the folkloric subject matter. This same epic quality affects other works in the exhibit that more explicitly aestheticize iconography, such as Leila Lal’s mixed-media piece of Rekha in the classic Bollywood film Umraao Jaan: a regal, crimson-attired heroine juxtaposed against the golden milieu of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and glowing in a lightbox. Rachel Mason’s caricature doll sculptures of artistic and pop cultural icons such as P J Harvey, Beyoncé, Ana Mendieta, Eva Hesse and Frida Kahlo are clad in jagged shards of mirror, signifying the fractiousness of creativity and how women who rise to fame and make a name for themselves are anything but palatable.

When asked what inspired the title of the exhibition, Wahi smiles self-effacingly and replied, ‘This may not be the answer you’re looking for, but it was a word my mother always used.’ Indeed, the theme of Zabardust always circulates back to womanhood and the under-appreciated vitality of women in art. It is no surprise, then, that the title of the exhibit was inspired by a strong woman in Wahi’s own life.

Zabardust vitalizes the representation of women in art, but resists a singular and monolithic characterization of womanhood, instead arraying a diverse picture of who and what women are. It posits contrasting images of women: the undocumented worker of Mata Ruda’s painting polarized with Mason’s dolls of celebrities, some of who are ‘worth’ millions. Fraleigh’s Western-centric art and illustrations of white women diverge from the women of colour that dominate the rest of the exhibit. This variegated and, at times, contradictory assemblage of feminist artworks embodies the multiplicity of feminisms that exist in the world today. At the exhibition’s heart lies the innate confidence of women, a confidence that surpasses borders, ethnicity and ideology. ‘It’s about being who you are, and being strong,’ Wahi explains.