SHAKTI
Before the curtain rose in Delhi, KIAN Foundation unveiled a festive prelude in Pune: a private Diwali soirée of light, community and shared purpose, on the eve of Shakti: The Art of Resilience at Bikaner House.
At its heart, Shakti honours women connected to the defence ecosystem: the wives, daughters and mothers who quietly carry unseen sacrifices. Through art, it gives them a space of resilience, dignity and hope.
Net proceeds from the Delhi exhibition directly benefit these communities. Its emblem, a red bindi on the “I” of SHAKTI, stands for strength, identity and presence.
The Spirit of Shakti
Bathed in an incandescent veil of magenta light, she stands like a storm contained in stillness: resolute, regal and radiant. In this image by Padma Shri Sudharak Olwe, the lavani dancer of Maharashtra’s folk legacy becomes a symbol of defiance and dignity. Through his lens she is not a performer on a stage; she is a voice rising from centuries of silence.
Her gaze pierces the mist like truth emerging through illusion. Her right hand points upward, not in gesture but in declaration, as though addressing an entire generation: I will not be forgotten.
Her left hand, resting by her side, carries the stillness of strength, the calm after rebellion. In this duality she becomes the embodiment of Shakti: the energy that creates, nurtures and transforms.
The woman in the frame is every woman who has been spoken over, defined by others or diminished by expectation, and yet she stands. For the dancer told her art was sin; for the worker silenced in her struggle; for the mother who holds her world together unseen; for the young girl finding her voice amid noise. Through her, they all rise.
Resistance can wear a bindi and bangles; femininity and ferocity are not contradictions but complements. Strength, here, is not the armour of dominance but the grace of endurance.
In dedicating Shakti to her, KIAN Foundation honours every woman who has turned pain into poetry, silence into sound, and survival into art. The photograph stands as tribute and testament: art, like womanhood itself, carries a pulse and a purpose.
- Siddhartha Naik & Aarti Naik, conceptualised and presented by KIAN Foundation
Art has a pulse. Art has a vibe. Shakti lives in both.
Art in the room, room by room
No white walls. Each work found its place in Lucia’s own interiors: against painted arches and fringed lamps, on easels beside a red armoire, in the wooden shelving of the library.
Light, music, conversation
The artists
Shakti: The Art of Resilience
Bikaner House, New Delhi