Paper short abstract:

The paper will look at the self-representations of Amrita SherGill and Rupi Kaur manifested in the form of self-portraits and selfies/photographs to evaluate how feminist subjectivities and sensitivities are shaped, conditioned in a manner female bodies are portrayed on/off the digital platform

Paper long abstract:

Resting on the notion that female identity is different from the male identity, this paper is suggesting that the representations by these identities in any of the creative forms are also expected to be dissimilar. On one hand of this idea, we have the celebration of differences, as Elaine Showalter (1977) calls it while stressing on the new representation of feminist identity through its "own subject, its own system, its own theory, and its own voice", on the other hand, we have the politics of differences that considers the differences of experiences within the 'female experience' and tries to reach beyond the male-female dichotomy. In the gulf between these two theories, this paper examines the manifestations of self-representations or self-narratives of Amrita Sher-Gill and Rupi Kaur in the form of self-portraits and selfies/photographs and how this repertoire of visual art subverted the cannons of creative expressions irrespective of the exhibition platforms they used. Influenced by the post-impressionist and post-modern deconstructionist theories of art, Amrita Sher-Gill brought precision to paint the comprehensiveness of a female body depicting, through such audacity, an unconventional understanding of the feminine and female, subject and subjectivity. A century after that, Rupi Kaur introduces the same radical and confronting gaze, questioning and judging the viewer of her Instagram post. Far from the conformist expression of art, yet preserving the feminist subjectivity of any other scholarly literary/art expression, she revolutionizes the medium of art reaching out to 3.9 million followers and 923 posts on Instagram.