How artists are documenting the everyday moments in women’s lives

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Daant ho ya dard aur ghusse ka pahaad… . “On most days, my diary entries are a response to what I see and read, and to conversations with women around me. I feel the need to document that moment and how it was dealt with.

That response seems like a kind of a protest to everyday erasures and violence," says Delhi-based Ijlal. Also read: Artist Neha Choksi digs deep into the earth to answer existential questions It could be a depiction of shared moments of humour, which a group of women manage to snatch while commuting to work; tiny embellishments that migrant workers adorn their one-room house with to give it a semblance of a home in a strange city; small protests against societal restrictions by asserting one’s right to wander; or even as a means of self-expression for the artist herself, of finding hope in dark days on paper. “Most of the time, women don’t see themselves as the protagonist in their own stories.

This is a space where they are the main character," says Ijlal. “When I started painting, somehow putting women’s narratives first on a blank sheet of paper came naturally to me. I paint women as they are — raw and unapologetic.

They are real women and their stare is direct, it’s hard to look away. They are definitely not what they are expected to be and their bodies are not out of somebody’s imagination." Not all artists started out by exploring the everyday world of women. It happened organically in their practice.

Until the covid-19 pandemic, Vadodara-based artist Jayeeta Chatterjee used to depict interiors and architecture. Slowly, her focus shifted to domestic feminine politics. “Before I moved to Vadodara for my master’s degree, I used to live with my parents in Santiniketan.