High Blood Pressure

But this year has been no exception. The 40-year-old artist is used to changing places. The teenager from North Bengal has come a long way since 2000,when she first travelled abroad to study at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Now,the world is her canvas. It would not be odd to bump into a New Yorker familiar with her erotic installation and photo collages,with bananas morphed into penises and terrifying half-skeletons dripping with gore. There are teeth and hair and silken beads with

tattered toys. “Blood is a metaphor for violence committed against

humanity,” notes Sen,adding how she began with using her own blood. “The second time it was being drawn,I fainted,” she recalls.

While she still uses her own hair in the works,her connection with her art transcends from physical to emotional. “My intention is not to shock people,but to shake them to think,” she explains. The motto has guided her from the beginning. It was the bias she faced due to her dark skin that led to the conceptualisation of one of her earliest solos,in 2003,“I Hate Pink”. In this work,between beaded strands of silk in pink,Sen placed pieces of black fabric. The same year,moved by the KEM Hospital nurse,Aruna Shanbaug’s rape case,she created Twilight Zone,depicting sexual violence with charcoal drawings across floors and walls.

The guests at her exhibition,“Black Candy” in 2010,walked into Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai,with an invitation card that read “iforgotmypenisathome”. Welcoming them were paper drawings with male genitals and two male voices discussing contraceptive pills and pregnancy. “There are these stereotypes that men don’t cry and I question such notions,” says Sen,who digitally manipulated her own voice for the audio. The artist,tagged as feminist,had turned her gaze on the male psyche. Not all works found buyers,but the series won her the Skoda Prize 2010. “It was prestigious,” she notes. Tell her that another celebrated name,Subodh Gupta,named her as the ‘Emerging Icon’ in a recent interview and Sen responds with a smile. “We keep hearing about rivalry in the art

fraternity,but there is none. Everyone has their own style,” says the artist,who prefers to maintain a distance from the market dictate. When her contemporaries were making the most of the art boom,Sen was distributing her works for free,in exchange of a letter,as part of the project “Free Mithu”.

Delhi has been her home for more than a decade,but deep down she is still the girl from Santiniketan. During her interview for admission to the prestigious art institution in West Bengal,she insisted on wrapping up early in order to be home for the 1990 FIFA World Cup final. “We ended up having a long discussion on sports,which I preferred,since I knew nothing about art,” she recalls,adding that eminent artist Jogen Chowdhury was the only face known to her in the panel of interviewers. Her teacher at Santineketan,she continues to be in touch with Chowdhury. “I always text him when I’m travelling abroad,” she shares. Next week,she will be in Melbourne for a discussion with students. After a short stay at home,she will head to Singapore for another show in January,followed by exhibitions in Denmark and the US. India will have to wait till 2013 for an exhibition. “There is just too much happening,” she reasons.