Sensations of Art Making: Triumphs, Torments and Risk-taking

The photography installation ‘Watching you, watching me’ (2013) comprises monochromatic charcoal, pen, and ink portraits whose contrast, colours, and textures have been enhanced using digital imaging artistic filters. The portraits feature fictitious traditional Indian women whose faces are inspired by observations of women in rural India during Purnima’s various trips to the country. Visiting the country as an outsider, she draws connections to her ethnic roots in her art, creating works grounded upon narrative, memory, ‘superfictions,’ and constructed realities. Their confronting gaze 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 to – viewers are encouraged to project their interpretations and stories to tell the tales of these women. In fact, 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 the 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.

The work juxtaposes the conformist culture of rural India with views of progress, represented in the use of contemporary media and techniques: “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 in making 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.