woMANTRA
Traveling through the Spring/Break in a non-linear fashion and beyond Western Judeo-Christian tradition, we encounter the Goddess as represented in woMANTRA curated by Sadaf Padder with Jaishri Abichandani, Sahana Ramakrishnan, and Sanie Bokhari.
As a South-Asian-American triplicate, they draw from and challenge traditions, both referencing their lineage cultural and religious background, and the multicultural reality of XXI century America which clearly failed to bring on equality in the form of white Western Feminism coerced by the military-industrial complex and seemingly serving the late capitalism more than women (read no universal childcare, education, healthcare, housing, basic income).
In the curatorial statement Sadaf Padder declares that the artists use religious symbolism to subvert patriarchal norms and invite uninhibited female subjectivity. The female is portrayed as deity, whether it’s Abichandani’s “Swag” aka Kiran Gandhi, her self portrait “Alchemist”, or Sahana Ramakrishnan’s “The Girl Who Smelled Fish” the heroine of Mahabharata story. Holy, powerful, asking uncomfortable questions, and demanding social justice for all.
She is the CREATRIX, the Mother Goddess, the multitude of forms that resurges from the ancient origins of pre-Indus Valley like in Jaishri Abichandani series “Before Kali”. She is the divine mother, our creative force, the one who gives birth to all life forms, the one who sustains and nourishes through her body, and the one who creates the cycles of life, death and rebirth.
woMantra brings on the truth of HER SAY, spreading the legs for us all to see the origins of humanity and how each of us is birthed onto this earthly plane. The Christian immaculate conception is a scam; so is the civilization built on the protestant ethics and exploitation of the environment.
Celebrating the feminine creative essence seems altogether more healthy as a civilized choice than the death-commerce cycle of the West.
Let’s all chant woMANTRA with joy and ecstasy as we build a more just and equitable world!
About the author
Jana Astanov is an interdisciplinary artist, a poetess, an astrologer and an independent curator born in Mazury Lake District of Poland and currently living in the Shawangunk Mountains, in upstate New York. She is the founder of CREATRIX Magazine and the author of five collections of poetry: Antidivine, Grimoire, Sublunar, The Pillow Book of Burg, and Birds of Equinox. Follow her on IG @Jana_Astanov & Twitter @JanaAstanov
