Artwork > //// Photo-based

In my work ‘Sita’s Escape’, I have created an enactment of cultural memory. Ingrained in the Indian collective consciousness is the character of Sita, the Goddess, wife of Ram and the esteemed standard setter for wifely and “womanly” virtues. In the Ramayana, a significant Indian epic, Sita endures an arduous life in unyielding devotion to her husband and his family, thus gaining the status of a Goddess in the Hindu pantheon. So enshrined is this concept of ideal womanhood in Hindu/Indian culture for millennia, that the expectations and pressures that stem from it make it almost impossible to deviate from.