Frame size: 147.5 x 107.0 x 3.5 cm
Nirmala Dutt (b. 1941, Malaysia) was one of the most prominent artists to have emerged in Malaysian art scene in the 1970s. After her relocation from Penang to Kuala Lumpur in the early 1960s, Dutt attended painting classes with artists of Angkatan Pelukis Semenanjung (APS) founded by Hoessein Enas. In a lifelong pursuit of education spanning across decades, Dutt studied art, art history, psychology and printmaking in various art schools in the U.S. and UK. Eschewing the dominant abstract expressionist and minimalist tendencies amongst her peers in post-independent Malaysia, Dutt cultivated a practice that included painting, photography, silkscreen, and collage. This painting belongs to the artist’s Woman series which features women and women's bodies as a subject matter, bringing attention not only to domestic violence women face, but also how the female body has been portrayed in the media. Woman V is a silkscreen and acrylic on canvas painting that features contours and shapes simulating the torso of a woman’s body as if seen through a screen; a cross rendered in thick brushstrokes dominates the bottom half of the painting. It shares a similar hard-edge graphic quality to Dutt's Great Leap Forward series, made during the same period.Throughout her practice, Dutt was committed to making works that stir the viewer’s conscience to sociopolitical struggles locally and globally—war and conflict, domestic violence, environmental destructions, urban poverty—often spotlighting the plight of women, children and indigenous groups.
