The Open Studio / Khushi Sahay
Khushi Sahay
The Gaze
A wall of red faces that do not look away
Red runs the length of the wall like a held breath.
Faces press against each other, bearded, open-mouthed, close.
Where the eyes should be, the paint stops at pale almonds of nothing.
Three girls in cotton prints stand at the bottom edge.
They are small. The wall is not.
Still they lift their heads and look.
The work
The Gaze is a painting more than nine metres long. Khushi Sahay makes it on several canvas panels joined into one wall. It measures 274.32 × 929.64 cm. Sahay studies at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and comes from Bokaro Steel City. Her work looks at how girls learn to feel watched in public and familiar spaces. Here men's faces crowd the whole surface. Their eyes are empty shapes. Sahay asks what it means to be looked at and to look back.
In the artist’s words
“Women are conditioned from girlhood to navigate public and familiar spaces with a heightened awareness of their bodies, their surroundings and the possibility of being watched. My practice examines the invisible social networks through which fear, caution and gendered behaviour are learned and carried across generations. The paintings investigate the tension between being looked at and looking back.”
- Theme
- Gendered fear and watching
- Material
- Mixed media on canvas
- Size
- 274.32 × 929.64 cm
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- Six Panel work
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
- From
- Bokaro Steel City
- Code
- RC-360
