MUMBAI, June 25 -- What does it mean to be a woman artist? Or a woman in the arts? Shakuntala Kulkarni, Prajakta Potnis, Yardena Kurulkar and Saviya Lopes -- all Mumbai-based artists across age groups, communities, mediums and practices -- offered thought-provoking responses to these questions at a discussion organized by the Somaiya Vidyavihar University's Dr Shantilal K Somaiya School of Art in collaboration with National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on Wednesday. Using lived experiences and by presenting some of their most significant works, the four women spoke about how their practice had evolved over time to challenge the male gaze, dismantle the hierarchy of art and craft, and create space to express rage and vulnerability, while also avoiding the art world's penchant for narrow categorizations that they said, erased nuance. Kulkarni, 72, who works in the medium of video and photography, using performance, murals, painting, and theatre, recalled how once, when crossing a road in Shivaji Park, tar from nearby roadwork fell on her face and burnt off her eyebrows. Furious and in pain, Kulkarni wondered how people --- and women --- occupied public space with a sense of safety. "At the time, I was also reading about rapes in newspapers, including one in which the victim was six years old," she said. Taking these disparate yet interconnected experiences, Kulkarni built a cane armour that covered her entire body and crossed the same street in Shivaji Park wearing it. "I found that the armour not only offered me protection but also caged me," she said. Her work, a photo-performance at Shivaji Park and Asiatic Library in 2012, was titled Of Bodies, Armour and Cages. "I invited many comments [while wearing the armour in public], but I realized that I could take them with dignity." Potnis, 46, spoke of how her practice has resisted social gendered expectations since the time she was in art school. Recalling an incident from 1997, when she was in the third year at the Sir J J School of Art, she was asked by her neighbours in Thane, where she lived with her parents, to make a rangoli for Diwali. "Since I was in art school, they expected me to make one. So, I drew broken lines from the ground floor all the way up to the third floor where I lived, as a site-specific installation. This led to many questions: Is this modern art? Where is the rangoli, they asked." Known for works like Curtain (2011), which was exhibited at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, and Capsule 7 (2018), exhibited at Project 88 gallery, Potnis explained that her art borrows from the feminist practice of resistance. "The trouble with categorisation [as a woman artist] is that it reduces you to a singular thing, and thus, misses out on the nuances and layers that are present in the work," she added. Kurulkar, 55, concurred and said that her art emerged from her memories, and experiences as a member of the Bene Israel Jewish community, which meant that gender was an aspect of it, but did not account for everything that she sought to express. For instance, in her 2015 work, Kenosis, Kurulkar created a terracotta replica of her own heart using 3D printing, which she put into a tub of water. As the piece dissolved, she took photographs and over the course of 15 frames, the viewer is able to see the water turn redder. "The heart," she said, "is an ungendered organ. It stores emotions." Lopes, 30, spoke about her turn to quilt-making and textile practice as a way to not only challenge the art world's hierarchy, which delegitimizes craft, but also as a way to engage with her own history as a member of the East Indian community, which does not find easy representation in the art world and in gallery spaces. "Many of us from smaller communities don't see ourselves represented in institutions. So, when I wanted to work with aspects of my heritage, memory became an important asset. In my last year of art school, when I made a quilt in collaboration with my grandmother, I was told it was not art, but craft. As a result, and because I am stubborn, I became less interested in the production of artworks, and more in women's labour," she said. Her 2025 work, Come Eat With Us, for instance, shows iconic women artists --- anti-caste icon and musician Kadubai Kharat, African-American author Mikki Kendall, Manipuri activist Irom Sharmila, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Colour Purple author Alice Walker --- at a garden picnic, breaking Irom's fast with love. Abhay Sardesai, the director of the Dr Shantilal K Somaiya School of Art, explained that the purpose of the discussion was to enquire "how [the four artists] participate in these categories, and navigate one's gendered self"....