A Room for Refuge by Anupama draws from personal and collective experiences to explore identity, emotion, and resilience
Artist Anupama, who goes by the name Anupama alias Anil as a tribute to her late husband and artist Anil Xavier, ushers in a new language of expression through her solo show A Room for Refuge at Kalakriti Art Gallery. The exhibition brings her mixed media works and assemblages, each shaped by personal experiences.
Her mixed-media works are populated with self-portraits wearing masks, set against abstract, layered landscapes that symbolically mirror the complexities of the mind — interwoven with thoughts, memories, and lived moments.
Anupama often uses her own face as a recurring motif, but her work also references the broader experience of womanhood. “I am part of it, but there are others too,” she says, positioning herself as both subject and collective voice. This introspective journey began in 2014 during what she calls an “intense time” in Hyderabad. Alone in her studio, she found herself conversing inwardly, as stories and characters from her childhood merged into a fusion of emotions and imagination. The experience, she recalls, was “intense but blissful” — a moment that blurred the lines between individual and collective experience and inspired her to explore deeper themes of interiority and existence.
While pursuing her Master’s in Fine Arts at Hyderabad Central University, Anupama began to engage with ideas of womanhood, femininity, and the social realities of women. She sourced rice paper from Kolkata to create depth and layering in her mixed-media works — a process that, for her, became symbolic of self-discovery. “I felt like a woman whose flesh slowly uncovered the layers,” she says, referring to her Island of Hope series.
Her early influences include the striking African masks she encountered at the Louvre Museum in Paris, and Theyyam, the ritual art form of Kerala where performers wear elaborate masks and headdresses. For Anupama, the mask symbolises transformation and power. “It makes the performer a divine being who transcends to another realm,” she explains. “The audience too experiences a kind of social transformation — in that moment, the boundaries and inequalities between them and the performer dissolve.”
“My husband Anil, who passed away in 2024, was a great inspiration,” she says. “He was the co-sculptor of the statue of Rohit Vemula (the Dalit student whose death at Hyderabad Central University sparked nationwide protests against caste discrimination). I came from an applied arts background and wasn’t sure of my artistic direction, but he was the one who encouraged me to pursue it.”
A Room for Refuge is on view at Kalakriti Art Gallery until November 5.
