Description
We leap into life, hoping to find the world, as she holds our hands, and helps us find ourselves. She is the Northern Star – a goddess for travellers, a leader for caravans in the literal. In the metaphorical, she navigates us through an ocean of existence. She warms our heart through the friends we make and fuels our courage to take unknown paths. A traveller between faiths, from Hinduism to Buddhism or the other way around, she crosses borders of every kind. We watch her light, travelling through diverse lands and various lives, as we hold on to a river of voices, with numerous stories of her origin. In one, she is born out of Kali’s third eye, a goddess for justice. In another, she comes from a bodhisatva’s teardrop - so filled with pain, it created a goddess of empathy and compassion. In the white snows of Tibet, she is reborn as a princess from the vastness of China, and still another from the mountains of Nepal. She appears and reappears, always with the perfected wisdom to guide, and to eventually, be the mother of all Buddhas.
About the Series:
This artwork is part of the “Sister Misfortune” series, through which the artist, Smruthi Gargi Eswar, narrates lesser-known stories from Indian mythology, while reflecting on the narrative surrounding women in our culture. Various Indian goddesses (devis) are depicted with a refreshing artistic lens.
In India, there is a constant burden on women to be “Devi-like”. Through this series, the artist attempts a reverse deification of the goddesses, making them appear like real women, in a real world. The series is an exploration not just of duality, but of multiplicity. It compels us to question our attitudes - women towards themselves, men towards women. How does the idea of a goddess coexist within every woman? How do we, as a society, so casually dismiss, disrespect, disregard, and defile in our everyday existence, those who we have bedecked with gold and enshrined in a temple?