South India to Germany: Sajitha Shankhar's Engagement with European Art and Culture

Gail Levin

《The Journal of Asian Arts & Aesthetics》 6期 (2020/05) Pp. 59-73

https://doi.org/10.6280/JAAA.202005_(6).0006

摘要

This paper considers the impact of European art and culture on the South Indian artist, Sajitha Shankhar, born in 1967. Sajitha first discovered the work of European artists such as Kathe Kollwitz, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, and Kazimir Malevich during her time as a young art student at the art college in Trivandrum, Kerala. After an early marriage at the age of 20, Sajitha moved to the Cholamandal Artists' Village in Madras, Tamil Nadu, the neighboring state. Living in India's largest artists' commune, which brought modernism to South India, offered her possibilities to meet visiting artists, who were often Europeans. She forged friendships and found admirers of her talent, which resulted in invitations to study and show her art in Europe, initially Britain and Germany. Through her art, Sajitha, at this time, was trying to express her shock at the reality of her marriage into a family of artists only to discover that the support for her work that she had expected was, in this conservative Hindu family, reserved for men only. Even after the birth of a daughter, she struggled to continue to maintain her career and development as an artist against the wishes of her in-laws with whom she was forced to live. Sajitha's continuing drive to win recognition resulted in an award in 1995 given by the Charles Wallace Trust of the British Council. Before Sajitha left for England, friends from Europe also helped her arrange exhibitions in several German venues. Sajitha left alone for England, leaving her five-year-old daughter for the first time in the care of her father and her paternal grandmother, who was by then widowed and living with her son and Sajitha. Her husband was anxious about Sajitha's departure. This was her first time out of India and her first opportunity in a long time to focus on creative activity. This article concludes with an account of Sajitha's reception and artistic development in Germany, especially through her work with the printmaker, Oskar Golzenleuchter. How the politics of the time and place, especially the shifting roles for women, and how her own deteriorating marriage affected Sajitha and her art are important aspects of this account of intersecting cultures.

關鍵字

contemporary South Asian art ； Sajitha Shankhar ； feminism and politics