About a month ago, Avantika Mathur approached us with an idea: she wanted to paint on her friend Bhumika Arora, a professional dancer. An extension of a previous installation called Woman Power, involving a painted mannequin, the aim here was to explore the next logical step. “The installations represented the body,” said Mathur, “while I wanted this to represent the spirit attempting to free herself of the body.”
Here’s Avantika with the original installation.
In early March, we connected Avantika to everybody’s favourite pint-sized photographer Parizad D (last name still unknown — it’s a huge mystery, you guys) so that this process could be documented and lead to a fruitful collaboration. A week or so later, the trio got together at Avantika’s studio in Navi Mumbai to get things started. Avantika painted painstakingly from 11 am to 8 pm on Bhumika’s body and, after a half-hour break, Parizad started shooting. The process was gruelling for all three of them, especially for Bhumika, who donned flesh-coloured shorts and a tiny tank top that was painted over and had to be patient-yet-graceful right till the end.
The idea Avantika wanted to highlight was, to put it simply, freedom. ”Women in society, especially ours, have all sorts of restrictions preventing their spirits from exploring everything they want to. I wanted a powerful, physical way to put this point across.” This was depicted in the form of strings connected to Bhumika’s navel, wrists and the back of her neck.
The pictures, shot and edited by Parizad, are finally here and they’re stunning. Using an array of editing tricks aided by Bhumika’s graceful poses, Parizad plays around with light, shadows, shutter-speeds and exposure times to create some powerful images.
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