Photo Credit: Anisha's FB
KATHMANDU
Artist Anisha Maharjan's second solo painting exhibition 'Think Pink', featuring 14 paintings since 2017, is on display at Gallery LA, Bauddha. The exhibition which began on March 9 has the theme related to the expression, experience and life of being a woman in the patriarchal society.
In the painting ‘Seven Days’, she painted the emotional pain she experienced when she menstruated for the first time. About her experience on period, she shared, “When I got my first period, I was in class six. After talking to my friends in the school that day, I realized that I’m on my period and my teacher gave me a piece of cloth. At home, when I told my mother about my period, she didn’t believe me at first. And my mother never talked about menstruation before.”
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This silence about menstruation between a mother and a daughter along with the discrimination during the time of menstruation at home inspired her to talk about period through her medium, painting.
In the painting, a teenage girl is seen covering her face with a cardboard box where 'Whisper: Sanitary pads' is written on it. The girl is wearing a red dress and her long hair, plaited in two sides is seen below it and she is holding her own hands as she feels she has been isolated from her loved ones. The backdrop is painted foggy with hues like red, brown and black.
This conceptual painting speaks about how our society makes a girl feel during her period — womanhood being shameful instead of being celebrated, even though it is the physical sign of the girl turning into a woman and being capable of giving birth to a new life.
According to Maharjan, the paintings in the exhibition are the echo of her thoughts, the harassment, the disappointment, torture, rape stories and more on what she hears every day. She added, "Being a girl, I don't want these stories to be told, I don't wish these stories to be lived by anyone. But everyday I hear the same stories with new victims. I don't think these stories don't disappoint any single female."
Moreover, this exhibition is her experience regarding how she has lived, what she has heard and what she has seen where her paintings using colors, motifs and brush strokes have helped her raise her voice against the discrimination of women in our society.
Through her paintings, she showcases a woman’s sacrifice of self, her dreams and aspirations for the sake of her family and society.
This and more is on exhibition till Tuesday.
