The Open Studio / Nandita Basak
Nandita Basak
Between glances
A train asks women to mind their dupattas. Everyone else watches
Mustard light pools on the metro floor.
A red shirt turns away. Blue jeans hold their ground.
Googly eyes peep out from the black between the pictures.
A suitcase spills its clothes like a long argument.
Thin white lines run from face to face, shop to screen.
Someone is always looking. Here we look back.
The work
Nandita Basak paints a crowded metro coach in gouache. Women stand close and hold the poles. Around this scene she pastes digital prints of her own photographs on acrylic sheet: shop mannequins, a suitcase full of clothes and a train announcement about loose sarees and dupattas. A screen lists searches that begin with "can a unmarried". White lines join every piece like a map. Basak is from the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication in Delhi. The work asks how clothes shape the way people watch a woman.
In the artist’s words
“I observe how people choose objects to represent themselves. An individual's clothing choices impact oneself and determine other people's behaviour towards them. My experience as a woman sharpens my focus on surveillance and social judgement, so my works have words of interrogation in them. I depict these scenarios in sarcastic, taunting and cynical registers.”
- Theme
- Clothes and public gaze
- Material
- Gouache and digital prints of self photograph pasted on acrylic sheet with white line
- Size
- 121 × 121 × 3 cm
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- 1 copy only
- Framed
- Yes
- About the artist
- Sorojini naidu school of arts and communication
- From
- Delhi
- Code
- RC-4192
