RELUCTANT GODDESS by Shalu
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: OIL, RUST ON CANVAS
Dimensions: 33 x 33 cm
Year: 1957
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
Reluctant Goddess presents the female form as a site of contradiction—revered yet burdened. The image reflects the weight of duties, roles, and expectations imposed on women, often disguised as ideals of strength, sacrifice, and divinity. The body carries both resistance and resilience, questioning inherited norms while revealing the quiet tension between reverence and constraint.
Why collect this work?
The figure is withheld rather than monumentalised: segmented lines and veiled passages turn the goddess image into a study of constrained visibility.
- Shalu states that her practice moves between abstraction and figuration through layered mark-making. That intention is realised here in the tension between a recognisable body and interrupting patterns.
- In the photograph, one eye remains distinct while the face and torso recede beneath vertical bands, ladder-like marks and wavering lines. This partial concealment supports the catalogue interpretation of femininity burdened by reverence and prescribed roles.
- The documented medium is oil and rust on canvas. Their combination makes material alteration relevant to the painting, although the photograph cannot establish surface texture, application methods or the exact contribution of each material.
- The compact square concentrates a broader question: whether divine status grants authority or imposes another role. Its significance lies in making reverence and restriction visually inseparable.
About the Artist
Shalu
Shalu is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: mixed-media. Based in Ahmedabad , India.
Nationality: Indian
My practice is multidisciplinary and rooted in mixed media.
