Zehra Marikar paints the quiet discomfort of the public eye in her latest Chennai exhibition

Zehra Marikar will tell you that her art comes from observation —of people, of dynamics, of the quietly loaded way the world treats women in public. But if you want to understand where that eye was trained, you have to start with the house she grew up in.

Two sisters. A mother who was, as Zehra puts it, “quite a strong independent woman.” An all-women household in Chennai where self-expression was unremarkable because everyone did it. “Everybody kind of expressed themselves very openly. And leaving home and understanding how different the dynamics are in the real world and how people treat you was a big shock and change for me,” she says.

That shock became material. The female body, familial dynamics, the pressures that accumulate around being a woman in public —these are the things Zehra has been painting ever since she decided to take art seriously. Her first exhibition came at 17 in Chennai. She saw how people responded to her work, and it confirmed that this was how she communicated best.

After Singapore—which she found too rigid—she made her way to the University of Arts London, where she spent three years developing the figurative, emotionally charged style she works in now.

She’s been back in Chennai for a few months now, and the return has brought its own material. There’s a particular discomfort she’s been sitting with since coming home —the sense of being looked at in a way that assigns you a meaning you haven’t chosen. “I’m trying to really extract that idea of women as harbingers of bad luck. You almost feel like every time you leave the house, you’re looked at like you’re a siren to lure men in. When honestly, you’re just going on about your day.”

That tension—between the freedom she grew up with at home and the constraints waiting outside—runs through the work she’s bringing to The Madras Art Salon, a solo showcase presented by Madras Art Weekend and The Botanical Club at the British Deputy High Commission.

“A lot of my work has to do with familial dynamics and just what shapes you and what makes you a woman, what makes you a girl— how that process kind of develops and makes you into who you are in the end.”

Being back has also meant, for the first time in years, making work for an audience that doesn’t need everything explained. “Sometimes it’s nice to not have to explain your art all the time. Sometimes it’s nice to just be understood."

On May 30. 7 pm to 10 pm. At The Botanical Club, British Deputy High Commission, Thousand Lights.

Email: apurva.p@newindianexpress.com

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