Despite the many advances the world has made in the last few decades when it comes to women's empowerment and representation, there’s a lot that still needs to be done. Our world is still deeply patriarchal, and many still regard women as the weaker sex and are expected to be submissive, fragile, and gentle.

At Patan's Classic Gallery, 43-year-old artist Rukumani Shrestha’s 'Vidamabana', an exhibition featuring 40 aesthetic etching prints, wraps the stories of women whose freedom and choices are restricted and conditioned by patriarchy. Shrestha—who graduated in printmaking in 2010 and is currently an art and craft teacher—with her artworks in the exhibition, brings a case in point that a society that worships female deities does not often treat their women in the same manner.

Shrestha first started working on the theme in 2016 to express how women’s choices and freedom are restricted in the name of patriarchy.

In her works, Shrestha explores outdated social realities like how women are not allowed entry into places of worship, kitchens, and, in some cases, their very own houses during menstruation. Her artworks also highlight how in several villages in Nepal’s Far West, girls and women are still expelled from their houses and forced to live inside sheds during their monthly menstrual cycle because menstruating women are considered impure.

In a society where patriarchy is so deeply embedded that it continues to shape the lives and choices of women and has become so normalised, Shrestha’s artworks might not evoke the kind of emotions the artist might have hoped.

Instead, viewers are more likely to be enchanted by Shrestha’s colours and motifs—we take pleasure in deconstructing the figurative visuals of the works, and that itself is also a vidambana (an irony) we confront at Shrestha’s ‘Vidambana’ exhibition. Unfortunately, we, as a society have become so blasé to gender inequality that women are forced to deal with, that we are less likely to give much thought to the message that Shrestha is trying to convey but rather focus on the artistic elements of her works.

Shrestha uses a lot of etched flowers and question marks in the prints to get us to think about how society looks at women’s identity. One of the artworks titled ‘Vulnerable’ features a Kumari and behind her are several angry bulls. The painting perhaps attempts to address how even as a deity, a Kumari still has to adhere to men's rules.

The prints in the exhibition also question the very concept of menstruation being impure. In her series ‘Chhaupadi’, Shrestha highlights a woman’s womb and her vagina with glowing effects to be emblematic of what the society deems as tainted and their business.

Perhaps to allude to the societal expectations for women to be submissive and fragile, the women in most of Shrestha’s prints have their heads facing down, are cooped inside sheds, or are embracing themselves. The nudity in her images is symbolic of the identity of the woman in question and the pain she suffers while the world around remains oblivious to her agony. It also suggests the sexualised objectification of a woman across different cultures.

The body postures of the women in her prints are also similar to the foetus' position inside a womb, possibly to suggest women have never been allowed to grow out of the womb (her home). The swaying knotted curtains or sarees appear as veils that hide the women’s despair from society.

Shrestha also places women inside shrines to contradict her prints that show women cooped inside chhaugoths. And she uses her motif’s repetition to her power. Be it with flowers, glaring eyes or just faceless women, they all come together to strengthen her point—ostracisation of women. In her series ‘Dance of Sorrow’, women dance with their heads held high, above rivers, with wind and clouds passing by, making them appear liberated despite the challenges and turmoil they face. It’s as though the artist wants to show how women have embraced the shackles placed by the patriarchal authorities around them.

But one of the most poignant works is her 24.5*32.5 cm etching print ‘Reflection’. In the artwork, a mother and (perhaps) her daughter are looking at each other in a field. The characters are faceless. For facial features, they have flowers as though to tell the transfer of the mother’s hope, shame, despair, responsibilities, obligations, and even patriarchal values to the daughter. It’s not unusual for a daughter who grows up opposing her mother’s patriarchal mindset to share a similar viewpoint while trying to uphold a family together or just maintain a relationship.

Patriarchy is tricky that way. It is so entrenched that we don’t see how we value it or transfer it to the next generation in the name of resilience and in pertaining to the gendered roles prescribed by society.

Shrestha’s works are also interesting because people can interpret her prints differently. In prints where she uses flowers, the motifs are symbolic of the purity a woman deity is bestowed with. And the artist might have portrayed women as flowers because she believes they carry the traits of the flower. But a viewer can also see the same work from the perspective of society forcing that perception on women.

Exhibitions like these stress how women are treated in society. But as a viewer, I was left wondering how the exhibition would have turned out had Shrestha also included works that showed women defying limits and taking control of their own lives.

There’s a poem by poet and writer Nikita Gill, ‘Girls of the Wild’, ’ which goes like this-

They won’t tell you fairytales
of how girls can be dangerous and still win.
They will only tell you stories
where girls are sweet and kind
and reject all sin.
I guess to them
It’s a terrifying thought,
a red riding hood
who knew exactly
what she was doing
when she invited the wild in.

Shrestha’s exhibition also falls short of telling tales of independent women who rejected abuse, she has instead focused on women being trapped and clenched in the values of patriarchy just as much as the society. And although the exhibition is beautiful and distressing, it falls short in making viewers question the way things are in our community.

Part of the reason the exhibition fails to bring the desired impact is because the exhibition’s curation does not create an unsettling environment that helps to drive home the point of how deeply embedded patriarchy is and how it impacts our everyday lives. It relies solely on Shrestha's artworks to get the message across. At the gallery, Shrestha’s prints just hang on the wall, one after another, without a design to lure people into the discussion raised in the frames.

But Shrestha’s oeuvre does make us curious about etching as a medium of art. It’s a traditional art-making technique that has become popular as an art medium in recent years. Her collection feels alluring with the vibrant and dark colours she uses, and her work is commendable because in etching, working with colours involves a complex process. One is not directly drawing on the paper. The image is transferred from an engraved metal plate.

But even with all that is missing, ‘Vidambana’ as an exhibition makes us feel the irony of the world we live in.

‘Vidambana’ will be on display until May 1 at Classic Gallery, Chakupat, Patan.