प, फ, ब, भ ….. म – Unrevealed I

I remember I was taught Nepali alphabets with unique forms or concepts associated with the particular alphabet. The first alphabet क was taught as ‘Kapuri ka’ — I still don’t know what actually that ‘Kapuri’ means. However, I immediately knew then the concept ‘Ramro’ (beautiful) when I was taught the 25th alphabet म as ‘Ramro ma’. I find म itself beautiful — it is more beautiful than four preceding alphabets in its own row — प (pa) फ (pha) ब (ba) भ (bha). But I? Since the letter म alone stands for a pronoun denoting I; together with the word ‘Ramro’ — राम्रो म — it claims that I am beautiful, I am right, I am virtuous, I am of high standard, etcetera. Am I? I doubt I am. Living a life of a woman is living a contradiction – we are taught to say राम्रो म, to feel like a goddess, an indivisible part of ‘Prakriti’ and to live a life of dignity; on the contrary we are regarded with disgust. We are ripped, raped and ruined and are forced to live a life of a destitute. In this series of artworks, I am trying to portray the contradiction of how we feel and how we are perceived. I picked clay as the part of mother earth and the blend of black and gold to give the feel of secrets and sacredness about female organs.

Pictures Courtesy: Pictorial https://www.instagram.com/picrealstudio/