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Kali's Daughters: Guardians of the Wild Matriarchs
Kali's Daughters: Guardians of the Wild Matriarchs
Medium - Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions - 5.5 ft by 16 ft (approximate)
Description of Artwork:
Elephants are natural matriarchs, guided by wise, protective females who lead their herds across generations. As an eco-feminist artist, I dedicated this painting to India’s human matriarchs: five fierce, compassionate women who have devoted their lives to protecting and befriending these gentle giants. Invoking the fierce, protective devotion of Kali, this piece highlights the contrast between untamed spiritual strength and the gentle nature of the creatures they defend.
To visually synthesize their journeys, I returned to my roots in Rajasthan and composed the work in the traditional Phad art style. Historically used to tell epic legends across centuries, the painting is architecturally structured like the individual gates and rooms of an ancestral Rajasthani “haveli”. This framework weaves five distinct conservation journeys into one cohesive visual sanctuary:
1. Padma Shri Parbati Barua (Hasti Kanya), India’s first female mahout, who has rescued and managed 500–600 wild elephants using non-violent, traditional methods of coexistence.
2. Geeta Seshamani, co-founder of Wildlife SOS, who established India’s first dedicated Elephant Hospital to treat injured and captive elephants.
3. Sonia Jabbar, recipient of the *Nari Shakti Puraskar*, who established safe wildlife migration corridors across her tea estate in Assam, demonstrating that commerce and conservation can coexist.
4. Padma Shri Suparna Baksi Ganguly, a legal activist who has spent decades in courtrooms challenging the captive exploitation of elephants in temples, circuses, and private ownership.
5. Dr. Krithi Karanth, a conservation scientist who transformed government compensation systems for farmers facing crop losses, removing the financial hardship that fuels retaliatory conflict.
Daughters of Kali celebrates the gentle strength required to protect species on the brink of extinction. These women teach us that safeguarding our wild world requires only the will to act, inspiring humanity to share space and honor our shared Earth.
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Coming to art after decades in medicine, I am drawn to transformation, memory, healing, and the ways materials carry lived experience. My mixed-media practice brings together painting, collage, texture, fabric, and handwork.
As an Indian American artist raised in Kolkata, I return frequently to color, pattern, textiles, and ornamentation as carriers of personal and cultural memory. For Draped in Heritage, I reimagined two domestic textiles as public art. I preserved the original fabrics through folding, layering, and structural support rather than cutting them apart, allowing their earlier identities to remain visible.
This process parallels The Great Elephant Migration’s transformation of invasive lantana into monumental art. I hope these drapes honor Indian textile traditions, Indigenous artisanship, conservation, coexistence, and the possibility of giving familiar materials a new form, purpose, and public life.
Pictures: Close Ups
Pictures: Close Ups
Pictures: Draped on Elephants
Pictures: Draped on Elephants
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