Princess Pea’s exhibition at TARQ weaves feminist archives into sculptural craft

In 'Wazan', her latest exhibition at TARQ, Mumbai, artist Natasha Preenja, widely known through the avatar Princess Pea, brings into focus the unseen worlds that women carry. Her sculptures and assemblages crafted from marble and turned wood do not simply celebrate material form; they become vessels of collective memory, shaped through gestures inherited and repeated across generations.

Princess Pea’s exhibition at TARQ include a range of mediums

TARQ frames the exhibition, curated by Mario D’Souza, as a celebration of collaboration as a method of knowledge-making. The gallery describes the work as one that values interdependence, listening, and shared labour as much as individual expression, emphasising the way Princess Pea reframes domestic craft as a site of resilience and imagination, where collective memory continues to evolve through making.

This positioning is central to understanding 'Wazan' not merely as an exhibition but as a widening of feminist discourse within contemporary craft-based practices. Princess Pea’s long-standing commitment to listening as an artistic method remains the emotional spine of this body of work. “With two ears and one mouth, perhaps listening was meant to be twice as important as speaking,” she observes lightly, but her point is weighted with intention

Since the project’s inception, she has cultivated spaces where women of varied ages and experiences could speak freely, often for the first time, being asked not what they do but how they feel. Those interactions, she explains, transformed into “a collective consciousness” that continues to shape her artistic language.

Domestic tools such as the marble chakla and wooden belan emerge in Preenja’s practice as sculptural signifiers of care, continuity and quiet resistance. By translating these materials through the lathe’s repetitive motion or the chiselling of stone, she elevates the labour historically confined to kitchens into the white cube, while never stripping away its origins.

Since the project’s inception, she has cultivated spaces where women of varied ages and experiences could speak freely, often for the first time, being asked not what they do but how they feel. Those interactions, she explains, transformed into “a collective consciousness” that continues to shape her artistic language, allowing personal narratives to meet the collective, “the seen and the felt”.

D’Souza affectionately refers to Princess Pea as a “meticulous record keeper”. She, however, insists her archives are not extracted or categorised but lived and embodied. Listening, she says, is her ethical framework, rooted in empathy, patience, and respect.

Princess Pea speaks with deep admiration of the women in the turn-wood workshop: their choreography with the machine, the way breath and movement align with the rotating timber. The lathe’s hum becomes a heartbeat, its rhythm transforming repetition into memory, labour into ritual.

“Her hands speak through the tool, transferring thought into touch,” she says, describing a poetics of making too often overlooked in discussions of craft. When such gestures are repeated not over minutes but years, they accrue power. They become, in her words, a form of companionship.

In gathering countless turned forms and gestures shaped through many hands, वज़न extends that companionship to the viewer. It calls us not just to look but to attune ourselves to the tempo of care.

Venue: TARQ, KK (Navsari) Chambers, Ground Floor, 39 AK Nayak Marg, Fort, Mumbai 400001

Preview: Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 6:00 – 9:00 pm

(Story by Esha Aphale)

The show continues till 24th December 2025For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.