The day before the show I curated for a New York art gallery, ABC News anchor Sade Baderinwa invited me to the International Women's Day Convention at the United Nations General Assembly Hall.

It was incredibly heartwarming to hear the President of the UN General Assembly, Philemon Yang, speak and the young women achievers aged 20 to 40. Especially Ishani Desai, a 10-year-old student who read from her award-winning essay on women empowerment.

While Women’s Day honours womanhood, it also serves as a reminder that every day is crucial in asserting our claim for gender equality and women's rights, highlighting the often-overlooked contributions women make in nurturing families and society. On this day, and on a daily basis, we must reject the centuries-old preconditioned patriarchal diktats of women being weak and secondary in the gender hierarchy, and work to inspire future generations to map a more just and equitable society where men, women, and LGBTQIA+ coexist with mutual respect and dignity.

The exhibition, ‘Free, Fearless, Fantastical’ opened at the Pen and Brush Gallery in New York, on 23 January, extended through Women’s History Month to 3 April. The show is a vibrant tapestry of powerful feminist voices from diverse origins and generations, woven together with threads of art and poetry. The exhibition rose out of a profound belief in solidarity. It's about women’s power in general.

A solidarity anthem

Solidarity is our anthem, celebrating womanhood along with rhythms of unity within diversity. Together we rise to challenge gender inequalities, nurturing a more humane world — an equitable world where archaic gender discrimination along with the divisive swords of race, religion, and territorial arrogance cloaked in currency and power, are not merely diminished, but erased.

We seek an evolved world where humans coexist with compassion and a knowing that we are ephemeral — that we come with nothing... we go with nothing — therefore, why loot and kill and subjugate the “other”?

The “other” are women and LGBTQIA+ individuals who have been victims of marginalisation through centuries. Why? Considered physically inferior in comparison to male virility initiated a legion of entitled patriarchy. Even if couples live in emotional harmony, there is often an invisible understanding that the male is the dominant force.

I selected artists of diverse origins and while they are all based in America, most of the artists in the show were born in other countries. Including the South Asian diaspora of Pakistan and India, Cuba, Mexico, France, and Palestine.

The passionate fervour of emerging artists along with significant artists who have made their mark, creates a dynamic blend of creativity. This harmonizes with the profound insights of established luminaries like Shahzia Sikander from Pakistan and Shirin Neshat a feminist beacon of Iran, whose politically charged expressions resonate deeply in today’s discourse.

Shirin Neshat, now based in New York, is a photographer and visual artist who creates stark visual contrasts through motifs of light and dark, black and white, male and female, in an expression of protest, urging for humanity and peaceful co-existence. New York-based Haifa Palestinian-Afro-Caribbean Bint Kadi is a visual artist, curator, archivist and professor. Bridging east and west, she deconstructs the Islamic iconography connected to representations of Muslim women.

Shahzia Sikander, a Pakistani-American of international repute, is primarily a Mughal miniature painting artist who journeys into realms of aesthetics in video and sculpture. Countering binaries, the spirit of womanhood in all its dynamics prevails in her art, hoping to disseminate thinking and hopefully make a difference.

Indian-born Brooklyn-based artist and curator Pyaari Azaadi initiated the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC). Through paintings and sculptures, she raises interrogations of various isms and phobias in response to socio-political exigency.

There is Japanese printmaker and performance artist Yoshiko Shimada from a historically male-dominated society, who explores the architecture of imperialism. With her ‘Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman (2012-)’ video series, Shimada alerts the present global society to rethink and transform the inequities that are prevalent even today.

Claiming spaces

The 70s gave birth to several artists who rose to claim their spaces with multi-layered articulations.

Sculptor, installation and performance artist Anindita Dutta of Indian origin uses a radical visual language to transform trauma into resilience. She deconstructs the complex terrains of female identity, mapping the intricate landscapes of pain, pleasure, vulnerability, and strength in powerful palpable expressions.

Another Pakistan-origin painter Saira Wasim transforms her learnings of traditional Persian miniature art to create contemporary paintings contextualising current socio-political issues. Her 'We Sinful Women' series, taking its name from the poet Kishwar Naheed’s iconic poem, employs tools of caricature and satire to magnificently articulate the dilemmas of good over evil.

Samanta Batra Mehta from India, based in New York, examines utopian ideas of hope and home, and necessitates the revaluation of our relationships of domination/control and consumption/disposability to cultivate an ideal world that is expansive, symbiotic, interconnected and peaceful.

Visual artist, art critic, curator, and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Sharmistha Ray, a 70s-born Indian-American, works primarily in painting and drawing, besides sculpture, installation, and electronic media.

Born in the 1980s, artist Madhurima Ganguly, born in India and based in Michigan, has striven to learn and unlearn. Her drawing, painting, sculptures and installations take her to an unanticipated surreal space. Her work storms and conquers a canvas, imbuing multiple meanings and layers of intention.

'Free, Fearless, Fantastical' is a clarion call to artists and poets, urging them to articulate their concerns regarding the fundamental violation of human rights experienced by women and marginalized genders.

This is a peaceful yet potent protest, reclaiming a space long encroached upon by an antiquarian patriarchal system. The artists and poets in the show transcend mere feminism; they are peaceful warriors seeking a nurturing of mutual evolution and compassionate co-existence of all genders including the bastion of male supremacy.

The voices of several powerful women in the U.S., many in the New York area, feature in the show. The proximity helps navigate practical logistics. But beyond that, if we were to seek such voices worldwide, from rustic villages to privileged urbans, how resoundingly strong would be the message of empowerment we wish to share. Imagine!

Honouring the past

Art is visual poetry, and poetry is art in words. Free, Fearless, Fantastical celebrates the idea of this merging of disciplines and minds.

Honouring some of our long-departed iconic poets, the exhibit includes the feisty poems of Qiu Jin (China, 1875-1907); Anaïs Nin (Cuba-France, 1903-1977); Fadwa Tuqan (Palestine, 1917-2003); Audre Lorde (USA, 1934–1992) and Kamla Bhasin (India, 1946-2021).

Their legacies remain with us, brilliantly interwoven with the voices of new generation poets who with stoic resilience, carry the flag of feminism forward. American poet Annie Finch, French-American poet Hélène Cardona, Croatian poet Nina Bajsić, Iranian-Danish-American poet Sheema Kalbasi, Tunisian-American poet Khédija Gadhoum, Filipino poet Virginia Jasmin Pasalo and Argentinian poet Guillermina Delupi, graciously contributed their own musings on feminine strength in solidarity with the artists.

Together, we celebrate a chorus of voices poised to ignite transformation — a shift from the stifling corridors of entrenched patriarchy to an exuberant alliance that champions a symbiotic society. This is a convening not just of artists and poets, but of a collective spirit inspired to create change and nurture a more humane world.

(The author is a Mumbai-based poet, writer, and art curator, the editor-designer-publisher of Gallerie, the award-winning global arts and ideas journal she founded 1997. Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Greek, Mandarin, Arabic, Telugu, Urdu and Tagalog. She authored the acclaimed ‘Big Book of Indian Art’, 2024, and has received several awards, including ‘The Women to Watch, 2024, Award’. By special arrangement with Sapan).