Inside/Out examines not only the existing gender spaces but also emerging challenges of transgressions, interventions and tensions created in the existing fabric of social norms." The photo exhibition features the work of four emerging photographers -- Sanjiv Valsan, Aparna Jayakumar, Meghanad and Poulomi Basu -- and is curated by our very own Georgina Maddox. Her note about the exhibition is appended below. Please go visit if you can. The details are:
Dates: 21st to 31st December, 2009, 11 am to 8 pm Venue: The Strand Art Room, Ama House, Near Strand Cinema, Colaba, Mumbai - 400 005 tel: (022) 3299 1008 ----------------------- Inside/Out - Curator's note From street corners to public transport; from the barber’s shop to the beauty salon; from the shop-window to the street-side kiosk selling trinkets, there is a written or assumed cipher of gender and class operating its twin dichotomies. Is it coincidental that the city bears the secret codes of gender? In all likelihood, the entrenched practice of gender segregation dictates which zone is frequented by which gender. Curiously these codes operate even within the seemingly liberated space of a cosmopolitan city. As urban planning professor from Barcelona, Daphne Spain, writes, “Looking at urbanism and gender is a necessity. Urban gendered spaces emerge when anomic social and demographic conditions create opportunities for new institutions to emerge.” Inside/Out features the work of four emerging photographers: Sanjiv Valsan, Aparna Jayakumar, Meghanad and Poulomi Basu. The photo-exhibition examines not only the existing gender spaces but also emerging challenges of transgressions, interventions and tensions created in the existing fabric of social norms. For instance, the train compartment in the Mumbai local is a heavily codified gendered space. It is a safe haven that provides a moment of repose for the woman commuter. Yet there is a breach of gender norms when a eunuch boards the ladies compartment; or when the diaphanous coil of a ladies scarf finds its way on the floor of a general—read men’s—compartment. The red-light area of Kamathipura yields fascinating subtexts when men solicit the company of eunuchs, or when a woman dressed in work fatigues peeps out of a butcher shop in Greece, belying the faint-hearted stereotype often attributed to her gender. There are other pockets of identity where asserting gender is an act of empowerment, like the beauty parlour as an all girls club or the barber's shop that excludes female visitors. There are yet others where the melancholy of isolation in the home-space plays out in shades of grey: Where the flickering television screen is the only window to elsewhere or the balcony the only portal to outside. While individuals may engage in flouting gender norms, urban signage, film posters and handbills pasted on the peeling paint and betel-stained visage of public walls reinforces the polemics of gender and class aspirations. These images convey the age-old urban myth that is made of muscle-bound hulks and sultry sirens, of fair- and-lovelies and size-zero beauties. These desires form the heady mix of dreams that run the city. It is no coincidence that mannequins displaying fitting garments sport malnourished bodies, lush hair- pieces, false eye-lashes and flawless skin. These are the beauty myths of the ramped-up globalised world. The tone is no longer disguised and the Sexual Sell (apologies to Betty Friedman) is direct and unapologetic. We as individuals are constantly parrying back and lunging forward on the double- edged sword of the personal and public space. Here codes of gender and class play concierge to our access to and from the gendered building. These norms cross continents and cities; they defy time and challenge notions of permissiveness. As a footnote: The theme for this exhibition emerged whilst engaging with the work of our four photographers. While gender was at the forefront of the curator’s mind, the resulting initiative is not the premeditated theme. After repeated viewings of their works it became increasingly clear that even though their approach and style is extremely diverse, they do share a subconscious predilection and sociological appetite that leads them to capture aspects of the city, wherein lurk the codes of gender and class. Significantly, it is a learning process that the gender of the photographer behind the camera may bend the gender curve marginally, but the clichés have been challenged by a perceptive eye that goes beyond just looking at the surface of images. Georgina Maddox
