Badass Indian Pinups Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Apr 13 2013

Location: 

Toronto Canada

“Badass Indian Pinups” is a series of paintings by Indo-Canadian artist Nimisha Bhanot, that features paintings of Indian women being confident and sexually liberated.

Bhanot was in art school in 2012, when the gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey took place in Delhi. The infamous case, in which Jyoti was raped repeatedly in a moving bus, and physically abused, caused uproar around the world. The statements made by some of the Indian politicians as well as the lawyers of the accused insinuated that Jyoti was to blame for the attack, because she was out in the night with a male friend. This inspired Bhanot to create her series.

“I was very angered that there were people out there blaming her for getting raped because she was out at night. Mohan Bhagwat’s comment about ‘Bharat’ becoming ‘India’ due to Western influence and being the cause for a rise in gang rapes sincerely pissed me off,” Nimisha told BuzzFeed.

The women in her paintings have a strong gaze. “Looking back and talking back are considered very unlady-like and heavily discouraged in our community,” she says.

Not only are Nimisha’s paintings wonderfully detailed and powerful but even their titles are ON POINT. Her paintings target common expectations from Indian women on how to be an ideal wife, daughter-in-law, and member of society.

Posted by Garima on

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