A singular 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 Woman, it was strolling on the hallowed grounds of what was to be Mannat, the now broadly common residence of famous person Shah Rukh Khan. In hindsight, it was meant to be. Pushpamala had all the time been an enormous movie buff.
Impressed by Fearless Nadia’s ‘Hunterwali’ look, she created the Phantom Woman 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 speculated to be one {photograph},” she says throughout a telephonic interview. Pushpamala by no means despatched within the submission however as she seemed on the images clicked at SRK’s bungalow, then generally known as Villa Vienna, she knew she “wished to increase this and make it into an exhibition”. Lastly, she created a photo-romance collection with 25 black-and-white images, shot throughout completely different areas in Mumbai.
The Phantom Woman in entrance of Kekee Manzil in Mumbai
Within the three a long time since, the Phantom Woman 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 12 months at Kyotographie 2025 in Kyoto.
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Pushpamala N started her 40-year-long profession with sculpture after which ventured into images. The component of efficiency although has been key to her apply in each mediums, as has been the theme of id. Though, that’s not how she prefers her work to be categorised. “I hate the phrase id. 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 need to speak about my id,” says the 69-year-old artist, clarifying, “My work is feminist. It’s additionally rather more than that as a result of I’m speaking in regards to the thought of the nation, citizenship, historical past, reminiscence. So that they’re all political in a way however in numerous methods. A few of them clearly so and a few in a extra delicate means.”
She revisited the character of the Phantom Woman in 2012 with the collection ‘The Return of the Phantom Woman’, a set of 21 –this time color – images. Pushpamala’s feminist strategy is embodied by her traditional movie noir heroine and her rendezvous with the 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 reside in, by making the Phantom Woman reclaim that very area as she strikes across the metropolis with none hesitation. “The lady has no entry to the town however you see the Phantom Woman roaming about sporting shorts all by means of the night time. However the metropolis additionally offers freedom… once you come from a small place the town offers you a lot freedom,” says the Bengaluru-based artist, including, “So it’s actually in regards to the lady and the town and the person is the antagonist.”
Raudra Rasa, The Navarasa Suite
Apart from the 2 ‘Phantom Woman’ collection, the exhibition additionally featured ‘The Navarasa Suite’, capturing the artist portraying the 9 feelings in line with the Indian aesthetic principle as a quintessential yesteryear Bollywood actress. Work and play all the time went hand in hand for Pushpamala.
