shakuntala kulkarni

Since the nineties, the concerns in Shakuntala Kulkarni's work shifted from her earlier concerns of human predicament, to gender specific issues. Her work since then has been an enquiry into the lives of urban women and their space within the society which is essentially patriarchal. At different stages of her art practice, Kulkarni started addressing issues like pain, claustrophobia, alienation, fear, anxiety, etc…experienced by women within these spaces due the discrimination and violence they experienced and has enquired into the possibility of dealing with it.

The need to rearrange and stretch the visual language to address these concerns and go into a deeper enquiry, compelled Kulkarni to shift her works from two dimensional space of painting and printmaking to three dimensional sculptural space.

At this stage, Kulkarni's earlier experience of her involvement with the intimate theater of the seventies, allowed her the freedom for experimentation with time, form and space. She was able to blur the barriers of different languages by using different disciplines. This led to working with moving images. She started using body language as the site of contestation for addressing her concerns through performance videos.

Beyond Proscenium 1994, was Kulkarni's first move towards the experimentation with interdisciplinary work which prompted interaction with dancers, musicians, poets, play writes actors and directors.

In the sculpture installation, Caryatid-A View Point, 1996, Kulkarni addressed issues of fragmentation and gaze through the staccato rhythm of the vertical pillars

Godhadis (Quilt), 1998, articulated this concept further through the joineries of small pieces of fabric with parts of the female body painted on it.

Reduced Spaces, 2001, a site specific, multimedia installation ,with the video films, walk in sculpture and a performance, allowed the viewer to physically experience the feeling of fear, anxiety and claustrophobia, while Grand Mother's Tales, 2004 , allowed the viewer to experience these feelings through intimate narrations of the women age between 78 and 86 yrs..

In the performance video, Confinement, 2002, Kulkarni addresses hope and despair repeatedly through action and sound.

Kulkarni successfully critiques the stereotypical gender rolls and gender violence through her recent multimedia project, and when she roared the universe quaked, 2007, consisting of painting and video installation.

Her works can be further viewed on www.shakukulakarni.com