Narayan's paintings reveal women's traditional nature

Narayan's paintings reveal women's traditional nature

By Yenni Kwok

JAKARTA (JP): Indian women, bright colors and textures are the three main characteristics of Parvathi Nayar Narayan's paintings in her exhibition, titled The Art of A Woman.

The Art of A Woman, her first solo exhibition in Indonesia, which is being held in Koi Restaurant and Gallery until Nov. 4, inevitably has a festival feeling about it. Narayan's bright colors imply a celebration of womanhood.

The paintings focus on the traditional nature of women: as an emotional creatures (in Women and Her Emotions), as mysterious beings (faceless women in her black-and-white pen-and-ink series), as caretakers (My Brother's Keeper), as givers (Thirst) and as home-bound creatures (The Ancestral Home).

Not all of the 33 exhibited paintings have bright colors or textures on a mixed media. The dark-colored oil paintings, such as Motherhood and The Cry, were painted before she began using a mixed-media texture style. Maya's World is one of her transitional works: an early experiment with textures using a palette knife.

Paradox

The Women and Her Emotions series and the pen-and-ink series are paradoxical.

The faceless women in the pen-and-ink series have their emotions shrouded in mystery.

"I will give you too much information if I draw the faces," Narayan said.

Instead, she invites the audience to observe the subjects through detailed surroundings, dress patterns and body gestures.

In the Women and Her Emotions series, Narayan relies on colors and strong facial expressions to explore seven different emotions of women: Curiosity, Pain, Frustration, Amusement, Lust, Despair and Joy.

She does not use colors traditionally associated with the moods being explored. In Frustration, she uses bright pink, a color traditionally synonymous with girlhood or flirtation. But she combines pink with the strong, angry expression of her female subject so that pink becomes the color of anger and frustration.

Besides portraying how women deal with their emotions, the pieces show how humans interact while dealing with their emotions.

In struggling states of mind, in Pain and Frustration, the woman has to struggle by herself. From behind her veil, the woman in Frustration looks at the audience with angry eyes. True, there is a figure in the background whose face is unknown. This seems to reflect the struggle in her mind.

In a happy state of mind, however, loneliness disappears. Companies seemingly "volunteer" to be by one's side to share the joy. The most obvious example is Amusement which is dominated by bright green as a cool color. Three women sit together and smile.

Domesticity

The message of women being homebound is strong in this exhibition. Thirst is a piece that strongly depicts the role of a woman as a giver. She pours water from a pot for a thirsty male wanderer. Her face looks content and peaceful.

In Tides, Narayan portrays women of Kerela, her own hometown in South India. The main figure, a rather muscular woman sits under a tree with the sea behind her. None of the other women in the painting look at the sea, a gateway to a new place. Instead, they look at their homes or talk to each other.

The Wanderers features young women playing on swings. They swing high like birds but remain bound to their place.

In an interview for Singapore-based Marie Claire magazine, Narayan once expressed her disappointment on how people generally portray pessimistic impressions of women and their traditional role as a mother, who generally nurtures her family and is bound to home. Her bright-colored exhibition seems to reverse this stereotype. It celebrates a woman's found happiness and contentment in her "natural" surroundings.