Seema Kohli recalls her first encounter with the goddess at the tender age of nine. Raised within a rationalist family, Kohli was brought up without religious teachings or iconography at home. At that young age, she recounts being drawn to a small idol of Durga, the intimidating warrior goddess depicted with eight arms, who travels on the back of a tiger fighting oppressive forces. As a girl, she stood inspired by the iconography of a woman with power, claiming her space in the world around her, a figure in direct contrast to the helplessness she felt growing up. The powerful image of the goddess has since then stayed with Kohli and become the energy that manifests in her rigorous artistic practice and ways of living. Over the years this shakti or feminine energy has appeared in multiple forms in her work. The Golden Womb, a series that arches over a majority of the artist’s oeuvre highlights the multiple roles of the Goddess, as creator, protector, destroyer, and caregiver. In this new body of work, Kohli excavates another form of the goddess, as a community of agents that propels the nexus of correspondence between human and non-human life forms.

Shaunak Mahbubani