Sangee Shrestha’s solo exhibition of paintings at the Siddhartha Art Gallery is centered on women. Though the artist maintains that she is not “advocating” for women’s rights in her paintings and installations, her works seek to reflect the daunting emotional challenges that women face to maintain their place and position in society. These challenges mean that women are knowingly and unknowingly coerced into presenting an acceptable façade for their own survival in society. All over the world, women are bound by culture and rituals that confine them into a restricted place. In the 21st century, these places or spaces are still being defined by religion, economics and politics. Though some women may find comfort in the solace of boundaries allotted to them, Sangee does not belong to this category. Her paintings are therefore a rejection of the boundaries imposed upon women and of the hypocrisy that perpetuates a woman’s ‘place’ in society. The artist finds the hypocrisy involved in presenting this façade both stifling and limiting.

To tell this story, Sangee has resorted to the solace of geometry. At a first glance her paintings are reminiscent of the Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, whose geometric urban grid paintings made a huge impact in New York. Strong black lines “represent the emotions” limited within these so called boundaries. She uses “color and texture to add detail to the enigma of human existence”. These colorful canvases have carefully delineated spaces. The boundaries are outlined and defined by geometric shapes that are juxtaposed against each other to form a grid or a power center that casts its long shadow on women. The boundaries also mirror the angst of the fragmented self or fragmented memories of a time past. After all we are the products of our real life experiences. In some paintings, the face of a woman emerges as an extension of this geometry. Sangee has reduced the female face into basic geometric lines. Most of these faces have an eye open. A red square for bindi or sindoor and a smaller square for a phooli define this face as local one. This simplification tells us that the artist is not preoccupied with individual details - she is more concerned with narrating the overall story of women in Nepal: the trauma of being constantly spied upon, the feeling of being boxed into a space and the ensuing loneliness.

It is obvious that Sangee has enjoyed exploring these ideas in her canvases. Her experiment in embossing certain areas of the canvas, her play with color and texture set the backdrop for paintings. It is important not to lose focus with the vista of repetitive forms that Sangee presents in her work. It is important to comprehend the subtle nuances in her paintings - the disturbing half -gaze of these women. Through the medium of her paintings Sangee poignantly speaks up for all women - when will we be empowered to open both our eyes and express our unexpressed desires and ambitions once and for all?