No, rage is not exclusively a masculine emotion

We need artists to remind us that these gendered stereotypes need breaking

The viral video of artist and activist Durga Gawde being assaulted on a street in Goa is deeply unsettling, but there is a brief moment when it offers some dark amusement. At one point, after Gawde has given it right back to her assaulter, the man is heard repeatedly saying, “She hit me!” (He might be saying “She hate me”. Either way, the sentiment is the same.) You can hear the shock in his voice. Clearly, he didn’t expect the slight figure, with a shaved head and wearing a dress, to retaliate. Not just that, the person in the dress took him down, tore his shirt and showered him with verbal abuse while reminding Franco how he had groped and assaulted her. That is clearly not the sort of behaviour Franco associates with femininity; just his luck to come up against a gender fluid person who is in no mood to be either victim or survivor. “I’m just a person who stood up for myself,” Gawde said in a video uploaded on social media.

A sculpture from Mrinalini Mukherjee’s exhibition (HT PHOTO)

As troubling as it is to know that someone like Franco was confident he was entitled to harass Gawde, the fact that Gawde is furious in the video offers us a narrative we don’t usually see. This is not a sad story, but an angry one – and that’s important because anger is an emotion women aren’t supposed to feel (never mind the minor detail that practically every mythology is filled with stories of furious goddesses wreaking havoc). Rage is a masculine affair in the present-day real world while fear is feminine.

In societies that have forgotten that there is more to the world than binaries, we need artists to remind us that these gendered stereotypes need breaking. On June 4, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City opened a retrospective titled Phenomenal Nature, of sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee’s works. Curated by Shanay Jhaveri, the show has 57 of Mukherjee’s sculptures. Aside from covering her 40-year career, the show is also a reminder of how art can push boundaries and change narratives.

In her last years – Mukherjee passed away in 2015, weeks after making Palm Scapes IX, which is part of Phenomenal Nature – bronze was her chosen material. The metal known for its solidity and immutability becomes almost fluid and takes the form of mutant flora and fauna. It’s tempting to interpret this as Mukherjee taking the masculinity associated with bronze sculpture, and giving it a feminine (and feminist) twist.

Mukherjee’s works feel distinctive and modern, even today. In part, this has to do with the way her art continues to challenge conventional ideas of what is pretty, feminine, artistic, masculine; what comes within the scope of ‘natural’. Her works weren’t crafted out of anger, but in the fantasies they offer the viewer are reminders that there’s a lot in our world that needs to change.