Throughout India’s history ArtThe female form has been predominantly viewed through the filter of the “male gaze” and reduced to an object, a symbol of fertility and domesticity and a muse of desire. However, the advent of women’s self-portrait explorations has significantly changed this perception. No longer the passive spectators of a female nude or a portrait created by a “master painter” to evoke male senses and sensuality, women reduced the idea of femininity to an object of desire, aspiration, pleasure and domesticity, which placed them in a vacillating position over their role as viewers, contemplating a reflection of themselves in a subaltern position, reduced to a face and flesh of male appeal. Self-portraits painted by female artists challenged these ideas and gave them a voice and authority over how their reflection and self should be perceived and viewed.
Amrita Sher-Gil and the basics of self-portrait
For “them,” self-portraits were not just an act of vanity, but a radical reclaiming of freedom of choice. By turning the gaze inward, artists in India have transformed the mirror from a tool of narcissistic reflection into a site of political and personal confrontation. Media has changed and evolved, but this application and protection of self-portraits still remains relevant, whether through the analysis of significant figures or the voices of emerging artists. Serving as a medium of gender exploration and resistance, self-portraits use the mirror to challenge the social constructs imposed on the female body in a variety of ways, almost transforming the mirror into a battlefield in which the history of gender and its place in Indian art in particular and art in general is fought.
The emergence of women’s exploration of self-portraits has significantly changed the prevalence of the male gaze. Women were no longer the passive spectators of a female nude or a portrait created by a “master painter” to evoke male senses and sensuality, thus reducing the idea of femininity to an object of desire, aspiration, pleasure and domesticity.
The modern self-portrait in Indian art can be traced back to this Amrita Sher Gil. In the 1930s, she used self-portrait as a powerful tool and visual language to address her dualistic dilemma of cultural identities, Hungarian and Indian, inspired by painting styles from Western art and India. Her self-portraits, such as “Self-Portrait as a Tahitian Woman” from 1934, were not just images; They were bold assertions of sexuality and autonomy in which she stared at the viewer with unsettling directness, demanding to be seen as a creator rather than an object. The following generations of artists in India followed her path and found their individual voices on their respective journeys.
Subverting norms
Building on this foundation, artists such as Arpita Singh and Nalini Malani shifted the focus from the idea of the self as self to the self as a collective commentary on the ideas of “their self.” Singh’s self-representations often situate the female figure in a chaotic domesticity, surrounded by guns, cars and maps, suggesting that the female self is constantly under siege by external political realities, while Malani conversely uses the conceptual mirror to reflect the trauma of Partition and the cyclical violence of history, suggesting that the woman’s body is the primary site where national and gender conflicts are inscribed and engraved.
On the one hand, the mirror and “her” reflections help her to fight through her rigid positioning within the guided gaze and gatekeeping, while on the other hand, reflection becomes a possibility for subversion in both the literal and metaphorical sense. For the Indian artist, the mirror serves a dual purpose. It is both a technical tool for recording the self and a metaphorical lens through which she confronts the gender roles and definitions of the ideal woman and femininity demanded by patriarchy.
The conceptual debate can be observed in Pushpamala N’s images and photo performances. In her series “Photo-Romance” she uses her own body as a site for performative self-portraits. By dressing up as characters from Indian cinema, mythology and ethnographic photography, she holds up a mirror to stereotypical representations of Indian women. She stages herself and sees herself the way society wants to see “her”, and in the process questions these structures. She uses the concept of “Bahrupiya” and builds almost a philosophy around the meaning of this word, which stands for “transforming into the other,” often using costumes, props, makeup and facial expressions. This “staged” reflection allows artists to dismantle the myth of the monolithic Indian woman. By playing the role of goddess, vampire or victim, they reveal the absurdity of these dualities and initiate their investigation.
In the contemporary landscape, self-portraiture has moved beyond the surface into the realms of the tactile, multidimensional, multisensory, and represented. Sheba Chhachhi, for example, has long used portraiture to document women in the feminist movement, often creating collaborative self-portraits that blur the line between her as an artist and her subject. Her work suggests that the “self” is a non-isolated part of a collective struggle. Tejal Shah’s work also uses self-portraits and portraits of others to question heteronormative gender structures. The mirror is used here to reflect identities that are often erased from public consciousness and considered cursed. For Shah, the body becomes a site of fluidity and the self-portrait a tool to demand recognition for the non-binary and the marginalized.
In a different approach, the late Hema Upadhyay examines the alienation of the urban migrant in his exploration of self-portraits. Her installations often featured tiny figures of herself camouflaged in the chaotic landscapes of Mumbai’s slums. Here the “reflection” reflects a shift, and the self-portrait becomes a way of claiming space in an environment that seeks to swallow the individual in its vacuum.
Hema Upadhyay in her studio in Mumbai. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint
Emerging women artists in India are increasingly following a structured movement towards metaphorical and fluid formats of self-portraiture, where the “self” is represented through objects, absence, words, communities and experimentation, exploring the sides of vulnerability, self-image and body, gender identity and political placement as key themes.
Self-portraits are no longer about showing faces and revealing identity, but almost an anthropological and archaeological approach, where the self can be reduced or exaggerated into a variety and possibilities of images and materials that speak of resistance and revival, conventions and the breaking of ideas, as well as the containment of a gaze towards the liberation of it.
These emerging voices illustrate a shift from literal similarity to conceptual inquiry. Through self-portraits, they explore topics such as mental health, housework and the intersectionality of caste and gender, proving that the medium is infinitely adaptable and evolving.
These emerging voices illustrate a shift from literal similarity to conceptual inquiry. Through self-portraits, they explore topics such as mental health, housework and the intersectionality of caste and gender, proving that the medium is infinitely adaptable and evolving. The main argument for the importance of the self-portrait lies in its ability to make a “gender question” possible. When an Indian artist paints or photographs, she asks herself: “Who can look at me?” How was I taught to look at myself?’
In traditional Indian society, modesty (lajja) often dictates that women remain the observed rather than the observer. But in our society and culture, there are also stories of goddesses like Lajja-Gauri who defy the definition of Lajja, posit almost the opposite of it, and embarrassingly and boldly highlight the power of women. Self-portraits are a direct violation of this modesty. It is an act of looking back. This “retrospective” is a powerful tool for confrontation. It forces the viewer to acknowledge the artist’s subjectivity. The mirror acts as a space for erasure, to rebuild and create an image not as assigned, but imagined and strived for by her. By documenting the scarred, defiant and divine body, these artists reject the predetermined standards and structures imposed by social, cultural, political and religious barriers. They offer a counter-narrative, showing a complex, angry, sexual and evolving self.
The journey of self-portraits by women artists in India is a journey from silence to scream. From the early claims of Amrita Sher-Gil to the digital-age experimental explorations of today’s emerging artists, the act of self-expression remains an important form of resistance and confrontation. These artists use the mirror not to find a perfect image, but to discover the truth of their own experiences. They are confronted with the censorship of patriarchy, tradition and the pressures of modernity. In doing so, they transform the self-portrait into a universal mirror. As long as the female body remains the subject of political and social conflict in India, the self-portrait will remain a necessary weapon. It is the visual manifesto of an ongoing dialogue of confrontation that refuses to surrender to the male gaze, societal expectations, gender roles, subaltern treatment and exclusions from the mainstream canon.