Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 72 x 48 inches
Year: 2024
About the artwork
Kaay Banvaycha?" or "What Do We Cook Today?" engages within the themes of violence and resistance through both its subject matter and symbolic elements. It draws upon feminist history and iconography featuring five monumental women - Artemisia Gentileschi, Bell Hooks, Savitribai Phule, Tarabai Shinde, and Sojourner Truth - each of whom resisted the structures of patriarchy, colonialism, racism, casteism and misogyny. Their lives were marked by systemic violence; yet the painting portrays them in a quiet, everyday act of resilience - preparing an unknown meal.
The question, "What do we cook today?" becomes a metaphorical inquiry into how these women strategically prepared and responded to the violence they faced—through their art, writing, activism, and intellectual work. These figures are shown in an act of preparation, as if anticipating the next battle or movement.The domesticity of the scene itself represents a form of resistance against the forces that sought to limit these women to specific roles and spaces. The inclusion of elements like the honey, representing healing and sweetness, suggests that resistance is not only a reaction to violence but also an act of care and restoration.
The work reinterprets the grandiosity often associated with epic paintings through a feminist lens. While historical epic paintings traditionally glorify male figures in moments of war, discovery, or nation-building, "Kaay Banvaycha?" subverts this format. Instead, it centres women whose work in art, social justice, education, and activism has had a transformative effect on society, yet their image and labour are often relegated to the domestic sphere. By placing these women in a kitchen setting—surrounded by both real and symbolic objects like the praying mantis, sunflowers, and the lunar calendar—the painting becomes a commentary on the persistence of gendered labour and the emotional and intellectual erasure women face.
About the artist
Saviya Lopes is a visual artist, based in Vasai (Bassein), India. She graduated from Rachna Sansad AFAC, Mumbai and has participated in various group exhibitions in India and across the globe since 2015. She was a participating artist and later the Director at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai.
Coming from the community of East Indian Catholics, she often works with her native history, through family archives and oral narratives; drawing upon activities like quilt making by her grandmother as manifestations of dissent. Her work deftly unpicks; reimagines history and reconsiders it for future generations. It never wavers in choosing a visual language to reinterpret what is lost. Her works really speak on a feminist key, intersectional, where subtlety, transparency, and delicacy convey stories of violence, heritage, and colonialism. And so much more that there is to think from them. She is passionate about the role of women in relationship to labour and textile histories. Lopes’ artistic practice draws from experiences in the spaces she inhabits. She looks at the body as an active agent of societal protest and symbolic value. Her work shows interest in the interrelation between body, language, culture and navigation of spaces.
Solo and group exhibitions include an exhibition at Clark House Initiative, Bombay (2016); Dakar Biennale (2016); Historica – Republican Aesthetics at IMMA, Ireland (2016); Stories My Country Told Me, Asia Culture Centre, Gwan Pompidou, Paris (2017); Working Practices, The Showroom, London (2018); The Crown Letter Project, Foundation Fiminco, Paris (2021); Bienalsur, Argentina (2021); “No More Ephemeral Bodies | Solo at Kathiwada City House, Mumbai. She has been twice invited to South Korea for the Gwan Biennale as a fellow to participate and has participated as a visiting speaker at the Asia Art Space, Network Asia, South Korea. She was on the curatorial team for the Kochi Students Biennale 2022-23.
