A raw, sacred journey into the feminine cosmos
Vivid splashes of crimson and deep indigo greet every visitor the second they walk through the door, making it clear that Meena Sansanwal has bypassed the traditional path of safe, easy art. In her new show ‘Divine Manifestation’ at Sanya Malik’s Black Cube Gallery, the canvases seem to possess a life of their own, as if the images are physically exhaling into the space.
You can feel a real, heavy sort of pressure in the room-the kind of grit that only builds up when an artist spends a decade wrestling with her own head just to get something honest onto the canvas. At the center of it all is the female form, but these are a far cry from those stiff, typical portraits.
In Sansanwal’s standout piece ‘Human Flower’, limbs not just stop at the joints but also they stretch and bleed outward like they’re reaching for the stars. Torsos melt into rolling hills and soil where life actually takes root. It serves as a bold, loud tribute to the power of Shakti, leaving the audience with the sense that womanhood is the actual foundation the whole world sits on.
The work ‘Flower Story’, a 2023 acrylic piece, seems to have a literal heartbeat. It carries a raw, heavy energy drawn from Indian folk traditions, yet the way Sansanwal paints makes the imagery feel modern and alive for a contemporary audience. There is a real sense of movement here — she takes ancient figures like the mother and the wise woman and swirls them into a visual style that feels completely new.
Even the paper-mache sculptures have a rough, earthy presence that grounds the room, acting as a heavy anchor against her glowing, fluid canvases. For anyone caught up in the madness of the New Delhi rush before the 22nd of January, Sansanwal’s exhibition offers a necessary escape. This trip into the ‘eternal garden of the mind’ is the kind of experience that stays with a person long after they have stepped back out onto the pavement.
Beyond her paintings, Sansanwal’s paper-mache sculptures-produced over nearly a decade-add a tactile dimension to her intricate cosmology
