Feminism and feminist aesthetics, apparently sound common in specification, have magnitude differences. Feminism is established on ‘the personal is political’ that expresses semantic innovation. In contrast, feminist aesthetics, transdisciplinary in approach, rejects the meta-physical essentialism and embraces the philosophical theories to deconstruct an unbiased social relation of individual and totality in political hegemony of power as Terry Eagleton wrote ‘The aesthetic, then, is, from the beginning a contradictory, double-edged concept.’ Delhi-based artist, Divya Mittal, an interdisciplinary art practitioner, and an alumnus of the Royal College of Art, London decodes ‘feminist aesthetics’ on the social formation of gender equity and identity within contemporary socio-political context, making intersectional study as central methodology.

Mittal’s conscience of art practice concerns the diverse mechanisms of traditional discourse on gender aesthetics and sexual interpretations, employing oriental and occidental historical references of feminist perspectives.  The revolutionary shifts in the paradigm of visual art aesthetics during the early and mid-twentieth century, whilst Dada and Pop art followed by the feminist perspectives in the 1970s, and the remarkable imprints of the Guerrilla Girls influenced her to inquire about the gender imbalance in society like John Berger mentioned ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ in Ways of Seeing (1972). Mittal documented exhibits in 65 galleries of the British Museum, London, in 2014 and concluded that the imbalanced dataset in the dynamics of gender statistics perpetuates the legacy of marginalisation of female representatives. Her work Drawings at the British Museum addresses the inclusivity of scrutinising the exhibition praxis through feminist perspectives to merge the lacuna of gender biases.

Delving into the ‘post-feminist’ ideology, Mittal’s interdisciplinary practice advocates heterogeneous complexity on gender, body, existential identity and social prejudices. Her representational artworks transform aesthetic expression into social reciprocation with the symbiotic relation of nature and culture. She converts female figure drawings into compositional abstraction breaking the forms. The presentational practice fosters convivial, synchronous social occurrences centred on personal memories and collective experiences. The diverse array articulates the plurality of human experience. Whilst her work ‘Just Get Over It’ advocating the social subordination of women speaks of the increasing domestic violence and abuse in the 2020 pandemic lockdown referring to the lack of healthcare access and mental health support, another work What Does Freedom Look Like represents humanitarian crises in regions like Palestine, poignantly unveils the geopolitical factors that infringes upon people’s freedoms and rights.

Addressing ‘there is a lot of alienation and multiplicity of truths between different subsections of the population yet remains a fluidity inherent in the concept of feminine that transcends time and culture,’ Mittal conducted a comparative analysis between Indian and European Art Culture in her dissertation Representation of Genitalia in Visual Art. Amalgamating the socio-political and cultural introspections despite the dislocation of time and space, some of her works generate a third idea out of sensuality. Her site-specific installations and performative art manifest the Freudian analysis of condensation and transformation. In Dancing Girl (2017), she demonstrated subjective interpretation within the cultural transformation of the feminine idea embracing the Indian Classical Odissi dance. Juxtaposing bhangas and lasya and ornamentation of the bodily presence in the absence of social code criticises the ontology of objectification, the politics of gaze – the male gazer and female object. Dancing Her (2018)represents the struggles of transgenders to establish social identity even after getting the right to equal citizenship as Third Gender with the striking down of IPC Section 377 in 2018.

Her childhood memory of diary writing has subconsciously transformed into texts as visual symbols and images in her works like I wonder how different it would be had these words been spoken (2014) and I am Free (2016 & 2021). It manifests the liquidity and ambiguity of lived experiences and explores Derrida’s concept of deconstruction artfully. In a way, the liberation of individuality turns into the universal language of paradoxes and metaphors, urges to conclude with the lines by the feminist poet, Kamala Das:

‘…I speak three languages, write in two, dream in one…’