The poignant and visceral masterpiece stands as a definitive milestone showcasing the formal sophistication and political urgency of Megha Joshi’s critically acclaimed From The Red Series. Operating as a supreme statement of contemporary original mixed media drawing, this unique creation deliberately rejects passive illustration to establish an authoritative tactile dialogue surrounding gender, religion, and ritual taboos in India. The composition features a minimalist red watercolor pencil outline of an inverted female silhouette against a stark white background. In the pelvic core, Joshi manually introduces three-dimensional prayer cotton wicks (diya baati), encrusted with heavy vermilion acrylic paint, which branch outward to explore the suppression, hypersexualization, and binary labeling of the female body as pure or impure.
The red series are vermilion drawings with cotton/diya baati wicks used in prayer, the fruit of the artist's longstanding preoccupation with gender, religion and rituals. The interference of politics and religion with the female body as a site of worship has long disturbed her. Especially in India, the female body as a place of “honor” is a concept the artist explores. The continuing taboos around menstruation, temple entries, rape in communal riots, hypersexualization and the suppression of the female body are, in her view, issues that require attention. The mixed media drawings revolve around the labeling of women as midwives and breeders or sluts and whores; pure and impure, mine and hers, etc. For the artist misogyny is deeply rooted in India and we have to dig deep if we want to eradicate it.
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Original Mixed Media Drawing - XVII, 2023. From The Red Series by Megha Joshi
XVII, 2023
From The Red Series
Cotton wicks, watercolour pencil and acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 11.7 H x 8.3 W in.
Megha Joshi, born 1973, is a contemporary Indian artist. Trained as a sculptor from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University Baroda, India, Joshi worked as a set designer and art director for film and television for 10 years before she quit to return to her fine art practice in 2008. She does scale installations such as with incense sticks for The Sculpture Park Madhavendra Palace, curated by Peter Nagy and cotton wool at the Sandarbh residency, Baroda. Drawing remains a constant in her practice. She has been actively participating in shows in India and abroad and has been invited to art residencies in Budapest, Scotland, Japan and Iceland. Her work has been shown at the India Art Fair almost every year. Her solos include ‘I:Object’ and most recently “Rite of Passage”, 2022-23, held in New Delhi. Her works are in the collection of galleries, institutions and collectors in India and abroad.
