A distinctive starting is commonly important to the making of a superhero. For Batman, it was witnessing a homicide within the alleys of Gotham, for Spiderman it was getting bitten by a radioactive spider. For Pushpamala N’s Phantom Girl, it was strolling on the hallowed grounds of what was to be Mannat, the now broadly fashionable residence of famous person Shah Rukh Khan. In hindsight, it was meant to be. Pushpamala had at all times been an enormous movie buff.
Impressed by Fearless Nadia’s ‘Hunterwali’ look, she created the Phantom Girl or Kismet for the primary time in 1996 – dressing up in a black masks, cape and a hat – for {a photograph} meant for submission to a movie pageant. “It was presupposed to be one {photograph},” she says throughout a telephonic interview. Pushpamala by no means despatched within the submission however as she seemed on the pictures clicked at SRK’s bungalow, then often known as Villa Vienna, she knew she “needed to develop this and make it into an exhibition”. Lastly, she created a photo-romance collection with 25 black-and-white photographs, shot throughout totally different areas in Mumbai.
The Phantom Girl in entrance of Kekee Manzil in Mumbai
Within the three many years since, the Phantom Girl has travelled to many locations, together with the Tate Trendy in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Nationwide Gallery of Trendy Artwork in New Delhi and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Her most up-to-date hang-out was the Chanel Nexus Corridor in Tokyo, Japan, as a part of her first ever solo within the nation, ‘Dressing Up’ (June 27-August 17), following a showcase of her works ‘Mom India’, ‘Avega—The Ardour’ and ‘The Arrival of Vasco da Gama’ earlier this yr at Kyotographie 2025 in Kyoto.
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Pushpamala N started her 40-year-long profession with sculpture after which ventured into pictures. The ingredient of efficiency although has been key to her observe in each mediums, as has been the theme of identification. Though, that isn’t how she prefers her work to be categorised. “I hate the phrase identification. Id politics has very a lot to do with oppression and I can’t actually declare to be oppressed. I’m a mainstream privileged individual and I don’t wish to speak about my identification,” says the 69-year-old artist, clarifying, “My work is feminist. It’s additionally way more than that as a result of I’m speaking in regards to the thought of the nation, citizenship, historical past, reminiscence. In order that they’re all political in a way however in numerous methods. A few of them clearly so and a few in a extra refined means.”
She revisited the character of the Phantom Girl in 2012 with the collection ‘The Return of the Phantom Girl’, a set of 21 –this time color – pictures. Pushpamala’s feminist method is embodied by her basic movie noir heroine and her rendezvous with town.
Bhayanaka Rasa, The Navarasa Suite
Her photo-romance harks again to the Nineteenth-century metaphor of ‘whore’ for a metropolis. Pushpamala performs up the irony of how girls are unsafe within the cities they dwell in, by making the Phantom Girl reclaim that very area as she strikes across the metropolis with none hesitation. “The lady has no entry to town however you see the Phantom Girl roaming about sporting shorts all by way of the evening. However the metropolis additionally offers freedom… while you come from a small place town offers you a lot freedom,” says the Bengaluru-based artist, including, “So it’s actually in regards to the girl and town and the person is the antagonist.”
Raudra Rasa, The Navarasa Suite
Apart from the 2 ‘Phantom Girl’ collection, the exhibition additionally featured ‘The Navarasa Suite’, capturing the artist portraying the 9 feelings in response to the Indian aesthetic idea as a quintessential yesteryear Bollywood actress. Work and play at all times went hand in hand for Pushpamala.
