Pushpa Kumari: Celebrating Vulnerability and Connection in Art as a Winner of First Take 2024

Pushpa Kumari, an emerging contemporary artist from Bokaro, Jharkhand, is one of the 10 winners of First Take 2024. Pushpa’s work is embedded in the very complexities of a system that is inherently patriarchal, and it reflects her experiences as a woman and the obstacles that have shaped her views on society. Pushpa hailed from humble beginnings and had no artistic background, but, undeterred, worked on relentlessly, and passed out with a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharti University, Santiniketan. She has completed her Master’s program (Visual Arts) at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda.

Pushpa’s work involves unorthodox representations of the human body, relationships and also the more profound aspects of life that read into emotionality and societal tendencies. She often uses her own memories and surroundings in her works, refracted through a subjective lens. Not mere objects, these works become emotional and psychological representations of life itself, questioning conventional perspectives on gender, sexuality, and social codes. One of the central elements in Pushpa’s practice is an exploration of vulnerability and the female psyche, as well as a larger commentary on the disarray of society that the artist expresses through an act of ambivalence, where the gardens she creates bring forth feelings of discomfort while still engaging the viewer in this often convoluted gaze of the inner world she embodies, both from an internal perspective and while also bearing witness to the world she inhabits.

Some of her most notable works include Fun Friends and Untitled — both part of First Take 2024. These pieces underscore Pushpa’s distinctive depictions of the human form and emotional depth. In the water colour Fun Friends, she adeptly uses colour and form to elicit intimacy and the complex dynamic of human connection. In contrast, Untitled captures a raw and vulnerable moment with its fluidity and lack of defined borders, which can be viewed as a representation of the uncertainty and chaos often associated with the human condition. These artworks summarise Pushpa’s interest in how experience becomes subjective, specifically in states of intimacy or hysteria.

It is an engagement that, through her art, Pushpa invites viewers to enter into anwhere they can both feel and see the form of personal and universal truths layered and interweaved. Her work passes the individual to use sentimentality and emotional appeal to connect with a greater audience. Her work interrogates the relationship between personal experience and systemic structures in focused and yet expansive ways, while constantly pushing against the confines of existing definitions.

First Take 2024’s inclusion of Pushpa K is a fitting example of her commitment to push the borders in imagery, and to establish an intimate relationship with the spectator. With one foot firmly planted in the traditional ethos, Pushpa manifests a cross-cultural symbiotic relationship with narrative genres and characters and is a visibility in contemporary movements that will resonate.

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