Shubhalakshmi Shukla: Most of your work centralizes the nude figuration under the title ‘Clothing the identity’. Could you elaborate upon the paradox?
Shanthi Swaroopin: My work has always been based on the human form.
When I was a student my works were basically of women draped in sarees or gowns . I portrayed them either inside the house or in open spaces. I was trying to juxtapose the interior and the exterior environ.
During the last semester of my study I changed my forms to male nudes. I also tried to put together the shadows with my sculptures. These were all small metal castings. I was interested in using two-dimensional drawings and three- dimensional forms, an ongoing preoccupation in my works.
When my own body was seen through my works and remarked, I guess I was not too comfortable. I also felt it to be too personal. I was shy to be seen and read. So I wanted to camouflage myself in the male nude forms, although it sounds ironical now.
I continued expressing my ideas comfortably draping myself in the male nudes and androgynous heads, thinking that I was dealing as a human being as opposed to woman.
Clothing in 'clothing the identity' is like hiding / covering or masking your being with another. It is like camouflaging to protect your vulnerability. Yes, all my figures are nude but they carry or rather have an aura of strength and dignity. I see these paradoxes most of the time.
So, I can say my approach was to deal with what is considered as universal.

S.S: Could you elaborate on how it became essential for you to work with representations of the ‘self’?
Shanthi Swaroopini:  Creating a work is like a visual diary. Years back I tried to say things through male figures or even non figurative forms which I thought would be more neutral or less subjective.
Yes, I guess, my work is more about the ‘self’. When I had to go through a personal trauma and felt a sense of loss of being, I almost lost and found my own identity. I guess which in effect brought me back to my senses, a realization that it could be a collective experience of being a woman with certain color, features, physique, class etc... One could not avoid the personal.
It was a time I could not, or rather did not feel like expressing. I had head aches and was sleepless at times. I started making some drawings on a small 6"x6" drawing book (a gift from my friend) with a blank mind. To my surprise it worked as a therapy for my head aches and my being.
Initially it was to do with my pain in the head that would direct me or rather I would just follow the pain and tried to translate it into lines, dots which later turned to some forms.
It was meditative.
These drawings led to works in wax, wood, plaster, latex etc which became a kind of an installation in 2000-01. It was a time, I wanted to be seen, heard and read as I was or I am. I took body molds, casts and chose the materials that are perishable, vulnerable etc.
It was during this time that I was trying to know how other women dealt with their lives and came across a book called ‘Women Writing in India’ which I think actually stayed on with me in the works I did in New Jersey.
The conditions I was in when in New Jersey were different. The place had excellent facilities to cast my work. So in time again my work changed.

S.S: Is that how you decided to work on your own body casts?
Shanthi Swaroopini: Well it has to do with my personal experience. I wanted to say through my body, which was a kind of center for a whole lot of things. ...  I was very confused and preoccupied to the extent of being troubled with the meaning of ones identity and the search for ones self. It was my experience and understanding then that we are seen or identified only through our bodies ...so I was keen to use my body in my work.... so initially I was taking impressions like an out line of the body or  prints of the body  which  later  developed into body molds and  then wax castings  of the molds..
That was also the time from when it changed to the figuration of women. Before that I was doing mostly male figures.

S.S: Your figures describe the sensuality of a female body and at the same time philosophically deny the emphasis on the bodily presence.
Shanthi Swaroopini: My attempt is to show both the sensuality as well as beyond it simultaneously. I respond to things with mixed feelings. I see it together and this contradictory observations take place most of the time.
Again it is my understanding and experience that ones identity is through their body and may be goes beyond it but not by negating its presence.

S.S: Can one address your figures as mythical or deified in a personalized way, in the sense they appear to be unapproachable?
Shanthi Swaroopin: Or may be ..  it is  another guise  that they are wearing.

S.S: some of your women figures come across as with hybrid qualities, for example, fused human and animal strengths, like the one crawling on the wall, or the one ascending in space from the wall. Would you like to suggest any mythical form through these?
Shanthi Swaroopini: Some of the works were created with reference to mythical forms like the Phoenix, the Earth etc. For some I have used my own symbolism to   enhance the impact.

S.S: one can see the resemblance of Kiki Smith in your work process. Would you like to speak about this influence?
Shanthi Swaroopini: Similarities with Kiki's work? Yes, of course there is relationship that occurs there..
I do like her work and was working at the same atelier. But to say that my work is like hers or is inspired by her work, I will have to explain few things. I could do only small works then though I wanted to work in larger scale.
I exhibited the work in Delhi (in March 2001) before I went to USA  (Oct 2001). There it was more challenging to work with materials I have never used before. I used the material for its fragility or impermanence. But all that had to change after going to the atelier because it had another kind of high end facilities, and I saw it was an opportunity to learn a lot there while being there. So the work was modified to suit the facilities and my budget.
I was drawing a lot and that helped me to visualize and work with forms. I mean some unexpected line helped me with my imagination
So it was not like I had a clear idea about what I was doing but rather the process helped me with my thought process.
Sometimes when I was involved I would get flashes of images, which I would note down, and then work on them. Again while working on these I used colors, which were closer to the flesh. I tried to get the same kind of feel on my bronze works.
I still feel like working on the same images on the actual scale and material.
I worked on my drawings in Kerala much before I got to see her works. I had to compromise on scale and material. I was modeling with clay when in USA.

S.S: How is your process instrumental in bringing out the essence of your works?
Shanthi Swaroopini: The process was really crucial for some of my works especially for the drawings and the experimental - kind of works. .. in one of my works, the work  was a takeoff from the process. it was video work  which is about change...

S.S: Women’s world is celebrating ‘competition and successes’. Please comment.
Shanthi Swaroopini: I think my women are also celebrating in a way... voicing their feelings and thoughts.
Yes, women of today have a certain degree of independence and openings to choices but I wonder if the majority of women are celebrating the 'success'.

Shubhalakshmi Shukla is an art-historian based in Mumbai. She writes on contemporary Indian art.