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This has been the year of radical self-love and body positive imagery with growing depictions of this voluminous reality in the artistic world flooding our social media feeds, and it’s about damn time. Art has always been used as a method to hold up a mirror to society, whether it is for introspection, protest or celebration. Not only is it now being used to counter unrealistic beauty norms but celebrating the human body with all its crinkles, wrinkles, flaws and folds.
While it definitely has its downfalls, one of the wonderful things about our digitised age has been the platforms that social media pages have provided for artists to not only display their works to the world but have the world find kinship and connection. This has only further sparked the body positive movement, bringing together people with different body shapes, sizes and colours, beating down and flipping traditional art and media visuals on its head.
We believe that art in all its forms – visual, performance, music, fashion and more – as a tool has the power to transform viewers perceptions, broaden mindsets on tabooed topics and refashion cultural ideas of what it means to be beautiful. Indian artists have slowly but surely put their skills to use, creating body positive artworks that showcase realistic bodies, complexions and experiences that have humanised and connected people from around the world through shared realities.
Be it an exploration of the female form, masturbation, gender fluidity or a depiction of same-sex love – here are some of our favourite Indian artists whose work has made us love ourselves and our bodies just the way we are.
I. Anjul Dandekar
The 24-year-old artist’s work covers a range of themes and subjects from cute cartoonish characters to sex, sexuality and the female body. Hard colour-blocking along with anime-like features, Anjul puts it pretty aptly in her own words in an artwork titled ‘Real bodies are rare’. Her art draws from the unseen everyday. The little moments that fill our days but seem to slip by unnoticed.
From wondrous cosmic galaxies to chibi doodles, she’s never too far from the next great idea. A versatile artist Anjul can create beauty in watercolour or digital, each one more expressive and individual than the last. She effortlessly stamps her identity on every piece she creates and leaves us in no doubt that this is an artist worth watching.
Follow her on Instagram and view more of her work on Behance.
II. Jasjyot Singh Hans
To anybody who has ever denied the beauty of a full-bodied woman, Jasjyot Singh Hans’ work will have you eat all your words and your preconceived notions about beauty standards. “I want people to remember me for making them smile and feel good about themselves,” he tells Homegrown.
It was immediately after finishing his course in Animation Film Design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, that animator and illustrator Jasjyot Singh Hans began working at Sabyasachi Couture, a highly coveted dream job for hundreds across the country. His talent is incredible, to say the least, having dabbled in the artistic melting pot of fashion, music and body-image illustrations showcased to the world on his one-of-a-kind Instagram and Tumblr page.
All of his work celebrates women at their natural, curvy best but his new zine, ‘Sikh Ladies In Sick Fashion’ combines this body positivity with his long-standing love affair with high fashion.
III. Lyla FreeChild
Lyla FreeChild is the name she gave herself, a reclamation of her own identity as an artist as well as that which is also to be her would-be daughter’s name. Lyla is as much a creation of her own artistic imagination as her works are – it is an extension of herself, her body and her creativity.
A major proponent of feminism, body positivity and empowerment, Lyla’s ideology speaks through her artworks that range from illustrations to blue pottery and crochet. Completely self-taught, Lyla’s work drew in a debate regarding the use of her menstrual blood as a dye for painting and fertiliser for plants, including Tulsi, considered sacred in Hinduism. The act of infusing menstrual blood with the soil that enriches the plant is not just for its nutrients, which she explains in an interview.
The very act itself can be seen as the artist’s protest regarding the silence surrounding periods and menstrual blood in society. She works to reclaim the female body from the patriarchal gaze and control as a woman’s own and her feed expresses just that.
See more of her work on Instagram.
IV. Raichak Ha Reang
Long story short – everyone has body hair, and while some women just don’t care about it anymore, letting it grow out, society still expects you to be silky-smooth i.e. feminine. Women have a complicated relationship with body hair, but what they want to do with it is their choice. You rarely see a single strand of hair on women in the media, and here is where Raichak steps in.
The Bangalore-based artist’s take on No Shave November featured a series of Wonder Woman illustrations, each featuring the superhero with body hair. “I thought it would be unique to show a woman doing this with her body hair,” Reang told Yahoo in an interview. “I chose Wonder Woman because she represents strong and fearless women — but even superheroes don’t always have time to take care of their physical appearance.”
It sparked quite a debate on Instagram where trolls rushed to criticise his destruction of “wonder woman beautifully,” although it was definitely trumped by the flood of support from across the social media platform. There’s nothing more inspiring than seeing one of the greatest female superheroes free-flying and kicking ass with stubbly arms.
View more of the artist’s work on Instagram.
V. Sam Madhu
Samyukta Madhu’s bold neon creations are possibly as far from politically correct as it gets, specially in Indian society. Her work is an exploration of Indian taboos including sex, masturbation, gender roles with doses of pop culture in a vibrant palette.
“I think whiteness has been heralded as the epitome of beauty for far too long, and even though people admit that our entire society is white-washed, only a few make an active attempt to change it up,” Madhu said in an interview with Broadly. “So that’s why I decided to make my own path and draw women that represent me and other women of color. Indian girls, especially, live their lives with this overwhelming pressure of adhering to societal standards and conforming to the male gaze.”
Whether it’s goddesses Kali rocking an adidas sweatsuit or an ‘Electric Medusa’ flaunting her tentacle-hair in shades of pink and blue – Sam’s work is not easy to forget. Changing the narrative and image of brown girls the world over, Sam’s growing body of work is one you’re going to want to keep an eye on.
VI. Sarah Naqvi
Sarah’s provocative art tackles everything from body positivity to self acceptance. Her powerful work isn’t what Indian society views as ‘acceptable,’ since the female body, in all its nude wonder, stretch marks, menstrual blood, nipples et al is not one people want to see in its biological form. She didn’t want to limit herself nor streamline into any one particular form of art, but she does see embroidery as one of her biggest strengths as she explained in an interview with Homegrown in the past.
Be it a tampon covered with delicate little red flowers and beads, a ‘crimson wave’ flowing from a vagina, or a ‘flab-ulous’ female nude, each of her pieces tears through the cloak of silence that has been drawn over society regarding the female body, its bodily processes and sexuality, for far too long. “The idea behind most of the artworks, in really simple terms is that we live in a society which is suffering from the effects of many a years of deep rooted patriarchy, which has created, cultivated and enforced an idea of the ‘ideal’ woman. A woman who appears, behaves and carries herself in a certain acceptable manner. We are also a culture that celebrates and worships our Goddesses, so then why is there a disparity in the way we treat our women?
If we don’t alter our Goddesses, why do we do it to our women, and construct a certain acceptable image for them to fit. All women are Goddesses, let’s start treating them the way they deserve,” she tells us.
VII. Sonia Parecadan AKA Googlymonstor
Popularly known as Googlymonstor and Devi, Sonia is an Indian American nude art model based in San Francisco. To simply say that Sonia is a body positive model, albeit true, would be insufficient. In a world that is still so afraid of the female body while also dictating strict ‘beauty’ standards of what it should ‘ideally’ look like, Sonia is among a growing group of women that serve as a formidable force of change.
“I’m really proud to be representing us big-nosed, big-boobed, brown-skinned South Indian ladies in a world entrenched in white supremacist beauty standards. As someone with curves (in my case, boobs) that are waaaaay bigger and heavier than the perky, pink-nippled, ‘acceptable’ C or D cups that society (at least implicitly) has cemented in our minds as aesthetically ‘correct’, I’m glad I’m out there adding a distinctive body type into the mix. Instead of hating my exaggerated features (as I’ve been subtly taught how to do most of my life) and feeling shitty about how ‘vulgar’ or ‘disproportional’ my frame might seem to people, by posing creatively, I get to discover all of its appealing idiosyncrasies,” she tells Homegrown in an interview.
Click here to read our complete interview with Sonia and follow her on Instagram here.
VIII. Veer Misra
‘Body’ is one of Veer’s works that have really stuck with us. The crowdsourced series only further proves that no gender wins in a patriarchal society. Through illustrations and people’s stories he sheds light on the lesser-known aspect of men’s lives; their struggle with body image. It’s not just women that are made to forced to live up to certain standards of beauty and body conformity. When the definition of what an ideal man and woman’s body is set up so high on a pedestal, no one can really live up to it.
“Having struggled for a long time with my own perception of my body, I didn’t often find the same courtesy being extended to men, especially some strong men I knew of who went through similar struggles with a variety of insecurities ranging from body hair to short height, fat to skinny, facial features to penis size,” he writes.
In our heteronormative and male-dominated world, many times such ‘emotional’ conversations are sidelined as being too ‘feminine’ leaving countless young boys struggling in the dark, unable to accept their own anatomy as it’s constantly compared to the ‘macho’ 6-pick ripped figures adorning magazine covers.
“Every type of body is beautiful, and more importantly every type of body is different. We all hold weight and muscle in different ways. And it’s time to share our stories and a little love,” writes Veer.
View more of his work on Behance.
Featured illustrations courtesy of (L) Veer Misra & (R) Priyanka Paul.
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