Sensations of Art Making

The confronting gaze of these women undermines the traditional societal roles that each of the women embodies within their communities. Silent sentiments, un-whispered words, and an air of mystery lurk under their veils. No context, place, time or personal histories are alluded – viewers are encouraged to project their own interpretations and stories to tell the tales of these women. Infact, this is what tourists often do at first sight – stereotype, predict and project assumptions. Inspired by observing tourists capturing photographs of folk women, Purnima attempts to accentuate the reciprocal puzzlement and fascination felt by both photographer and his or her subject while a photograph is taken. The women are conveyed as both passive ‘objects of display’ and as empowered individuals.

This photographic series extends upon Purnima’s public art installation, Indian Women Lining the Laundry (2008), which explored the domestic role of women through the materials and arrangement of the installation. Sixty fictional portraits of exotic Indian women, similar to those depicted in this series, were transferred onto white-cotton tea towels using an iron-on fabric transfer technique. These were hung on a clothesline, symbolic of women engaged in domestic chores such as laundry, often perceived by women in less developed societies as collective experiences.

The series Watching you, watching me, juxtaposes the conformist culture of rural India with views of progress, represented in the use of contemporary media and techniques. Purnima uses the original charcoal drawings of the portraits to achieve different aesthetic ends. “These people, like all people, have more depth than what the human eye and photography can record – the visual layering technique afforded by the use of multiple media, symbolises the more complex construction of identity”.

Contemporary Chinese artist, Hen Lei, also influenced Purnima for the making of these portraits. She was inspired by his show, ‘Alienation’, (Beijing Contemporary Art Gallery, 1995) which featured fifty idiosyncratic and estranged photographic images of street life throughout China. Purnima is also influenced by Melbourne-based artist, Mary Schepisi, whose figurative works involve a range of mixed media applications. Mary’s series of portraits in Speculations (2004) are particularly intimate and confronting, exploring issues of domestic violence, mental illness and sexual assault. She invites viewers to match biographical texts written by the women, to the portraits – it is this subjectivity in portraiture, that Purnima examines.

Purnima believes in the union between the roles of teacher and artist, perceiving that teaching involves exercising creativity and artistry. She is actively involved in arts management, curatorship, research on artist-teacher issues, museum education and her art practice, finding that these activities greatly supports critical discussions with her own current Master of Education and Master of Teaching students, with whom she models her own artistic endeavours and teaching pedagogy. In turn, her students demonstrate appreciation, motivation and desired application of artist-teacher roles. Her art practice and strong interest in contemporary Asian art strengthens her advocacy for programs and lessons that promote intercultural understanding and cross-curriculum priorities of Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia.