Akar Prakar presents, Of Spaces of their Own: Women Artists in 20th Century India, the exhibition tries to bring together women artists across India with their diverse practices spanning the 20th century: early to late mid-twentieth century. It speaks about how they held and made spaces of their own. To chart out this journey one can start with the beginning of modernism in the early twentieth century during the pre-independence period. With the Swadeshi movement as a context, one sees the arrival of the women’s question which also created spaces of visibility for the women art practitioners. The informal educational spaces of antahpur or the grihavidyalayas became spaces of utmost importance which opened up the public domain for the women art
practitioners, most of the early women artists began their journey within these domestic folds.
Later, there was a shift to a more institutionalised space of the university education in Kala-Bhavana which from its very inception was inclusive of female students. Artist personas like Amrita Sher-Gil arrive at the scene with aesthetics that address the East-West dilemma. She creates spaces of her own interpretations of indigenism and Western modernism.
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