Iconic Women Project

A Mother’s Vengeance In the 6th century BCE, the Central Asian Steppe was a vast and hostile terrain, where the warlike Scythians, the original horselords of the ancient world, reigned supreme. Her husband dead, her son captured by Cyrus the Great, and her people under attack, Tomiris, queen of the Massagatae (associated with the Scythians), might have felt she had little to lose. Having refused Cyrus’ offer of marriage, Tomiris knew she would have to brace her people for open war with the most powerful man alive at the time. With the Achaemenid armies closing in on her lands, she sent out a defiant message: “King of Persia…Be content to rule in peace your own kingdom, and bear to see us reign over the countries that are ours to govern.” It was when her son Spargapises died in captivity under Cyrus’ armies (by some accounts killing himself), that an enraged Tomiris gathered every single force in her command and attacked, eventually defeating them. According to the ancient Greek h...

The Dragon Lady Few women in history have been as vilified as Cixi (“Tse-shee”, 1835-1905), the concubine who took absolute power in China, and held on to it, for almost 50 years. After a century of defamation as a Wicked Witch of the East, historians have decided it’s time to relook at her legacy. From a powerless teenager in the harem of Emperor Xianfeng, Cixi rose sharply in the ranks, becoming the Empress Dowager and effectively the person in command of China. She did this through a mix of fate (by giving birth to the emperor’s only son), and the clever move of befriending Empress Ci’an. They would be co-regents and remain close allies until Ci’an’s death. As Xianfeng sank into a stupor induced by opium and women with tiny feet, Cixi spent time studying Confucianism, while mastering court politics. After his death, she ruthlessly dismissed the men in power, putting her son Tongzhi on the throne aged 5. Cixi stood behind a scroll, taking every decision. (And so was born the ph...

"My pets are my hats." Fashion writer, influencer, icon, the Original Punk Grandmom. Anna Piaggi was also wildly experimental in her self expression. Her peculiar and insanely eclectic wardrobe spanned around 200 years, and what she walked out in was always a mix of vintage, theatrical, clownish, childlike dress-up. The beauty of it was it could never really be defined. An obsessive collector of vintage and historical wardrobe pieces, her styling was a collage of stories, eras and lives lived through time. She had a wild curiosity and appetite for clothing and accessories from auction houses, pavement stalls, vintage sellers and grand old ladies recently departed. Army fatigues and Manolo Blahniks, aprons, boas and walking sticks...each item had a life and a story. Thank you @ashdeenl my most fashion-educated friend for introducing me to her. Really hope I did even a tiny bit of justice to this incredible woman. .

The Ultimate Shape Shifter "We are all the product of what we want to project to the world." Cindy Sherman is that iconic artist whose work intrigues us because it starts to reveal itself, and then doesn't. The picture holds the promise of a story, drawing the viewer in to work through the layers. The projected and overt, the woman behind the dress-up, the play on identity, the invitation to gaze, and finally, the meaning of all of these, overlayed and coexisting. Perhaps my strongest influence and inspiration, somewhere in the raison d'etre of the @iconicwomenproject lies a deep if subterranean link to Cindy Sherman. A key figure of the 'Pictures Generation', a group of American artists whose work focused on social critique in an era of growing mass imagery in the early '80s, Cindy Sherman's work takes a profound look at identity, especially female, as something carefully fashioned for consumption and deception. Turning the camera on herself in...

"Wake up! We are losing Mali! We are losing our culture, our tradition, our origin, our roots!" . Fatoumata Diawara's smoky-sweet voice was one of those that rang out in protest at the fundamentalist takeover of Northern Mali in 2012. . Singer-songwriter, actor and multiple Grammy nominee, Fatoumata was born to Malian parents in Ivory Coast, and in her teens fled Bamako to eventually live in Paris. . With her use of the electric guitar with traditional West African beats and sounds, she is one of the artistes thanks to whom many of us are now familiar with Touareg music. . On her emotional connect to Mali and its music, she says "Every aunt in my village, they sing only for themselves, for weddings, for spiritual reasons. The melodies are different from jazz, but the roots are right there." . I decided to give this Malian look a playful Indian twist, with a Kanjivaram sari, Assamese scarf and my favourite Malnad beads. Thank you @sithara_kudige for introducing...

As anyone who was a teenager in 90s' India will attest, Alisha Chinai was someone you noticed. IndiPop was suddenly a 'thing'... Our first taste of westernised pop music for Indians by Indians... and there she was, right at the heart of it. Finally, here was an outspoken and opinionated woman. A true entertainer, quirky, sexy and cheeky, too interesting to be lost to plain old playback singing. And she knew it. (Since I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor when Milind Soman appeared out of smoke in 'Made in India', it dawned on me only later that it was the very first time I'd actually seen a man being objectified on an Indian screen.) Her album cover Madonna brings back the 90s nostalgia, and there she is once again on our recently-turned-color TV screen. Simple times, made peppier by Alisha. 💘💘💘

"In the entire Amy Winehouse saga, there were no winners. Everybody lost." It's hard to think of her without cliches: White woman with a black woman's voice. Part of the 27 Club. Reader of JD Salinger. Creator of her own iconic 60s style. All this sometimes overshadows her soulful, witty, self deprecating poetry and lyrics. Honest, authentic and full of self doubt, Amy's songs were her life poured out in words and music. Her ups and downs became a thing of scrutiny and social media-fuelled voyeurism as it all spiralled tragically downwards. What stays on is her absolute uniqueness. There will only ever be one Amy Winehouse. 🌹

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA6ZtRXi_cM&t=280s Over a decade ago, as an impressionable young woman in her twenties, I spent some time in Mexico City, where I encountered for the first time, the life and works of Frida Kahlo. I have this distinct memory of walking through her sunlit home with bright blue walls – now a museum frozen in time. The old pieces of traditional Mexican pottery and textiles strewn among her easels, gave me a sense of her deep identification with the many Mexicos past, overlaid with veneers of the present. Through symbolism and experience, her paintings were her revelations – the pain and suffering of her life, lived and recreated. I didn’t know it then, but it was these moments of connecting deeply with one woman’s quest for self realisation that left an indelible impact. Today, I'm here to share with you my experiences with what has become the Iconic Women Project. A story of  creative self expression , mine as well as those of women thro...

The Syrian Queen who Defied Rome 1800 years ago, the prosperous and cultured province of Palmyra audaciously broke away from the Roman Empire, led by a woman named Zenobia. When her husband, King Odaenathus was killed, Zenobia became the regent in name, but the holder of supreme power behind the scenes. Taking advantage of a crisis in the Roman Empire, she took over Egypt from Rome, then Asia Minor and the Levant, rapidly expanding her empire. A brilliant military commander, she did this by waging war on Roman provinces while outwardly continuing to be the peaceful gatekeeper of the Roman East, driving her agenda with no open conflict. This worked well until the Roman emperor Aurelian decided he wanted his provinces back. He tore through her lands, destroying every city in his wake and finally defeating Zenobia’s army. Caught while trying to flee to safety, she was taken prisoner and forcibly brought back to Aurelian, supposedly in g...

Mother of Ancient Queens Her skull crushed into tiny pieces by the weight of millennia, Puabi lay in her final resting place, undisturbed, for 4,500 years. Dressed in beaded jewellery and laden with gold, a cylinder seal next to her was inscribed in the cuneiform script of ancient Mesopotamia, ‘Puabi, the Queen’. In the patriarchal world of Sumer, Puabi appears to have been a ruler in her own right, as her name was not attached to that of a male ruler. And though the jury is still out, this might imply that Puabi was indeed the first female ruler in recorded history. Much like Hatshepsut of ancient Egypt who ruled a millennium after her, or Queen Elizabeth I, Puabi too once ruled alone, holding the symbolic branch of dates, in what were the world’s first civilised cities. Changeless in a changing world, along with her grave were unearthed the stories of grisly mass murders in an ancient ritual of human sacrifice; servants, musicians, guards and anim...

The Beautiful Princess of Persia A few years after the first-ever photographs were released in the mid 1800’s in France, the Shah of Persia had experts brought over as his court photographers, to ‘objectively’ record his reign of glory and power for the world to see. The most photographed woman in Persia, in ‘modern’ dress at a time when strict veiling and seclusion were the norm, Princess Esmat al Dowleh became a symbol of a rapidly modernising nation. What struck the world, apart from her downy moustache, unibrow and large frame, was how proudly she seemed to carry them. Considered a symbol of beauty and strength, women of the Qajar Dynasty embraced facial hair, even flaunted it. Under the progressive reign of her father, Shah Naser al Din Qajar, the court attire of the entire zenana changed from floor-grazing hejabs to tutu-style skirts (thanks to the growing cultural influence of Russia on Persia). Known for her special knack in diplomacy, Esmat al D...

The Insider-Outsider “I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India, feeling in some strange, inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter.” In her short but intense career, Amrita Sher-Gil painted the lives of people with a depth and empathy that is strongly palpable, making her an unforgettable avant-garde painter of the 20th century. Of mixed heritage, Sikh and Jewish-Hungarian, she studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but found her artistic personality in India. This duality in her sense of belonging marked her extremely influential career, infusing in her work a modernity not seen in India at the time. In her own words, “Indian art committed the mistake of feeding almost exclusively on the tradition of mythology and romance.” Behind her hauntingly beautiful and forceful portraits was a rare woman who defiantly embraced her choices, her dual sexual orientation, her unique amalgamation of East and West...

The Sun among Women It is hard not to speak of Nur Jahan in superlatives. The 20th wife of Emperor Jehangir, she was by all accounts an unusual woman. The original over-achiever, she became the de facto decision-maker for the Mughal Empire at the height of its power and glory. Trusted implicitly by her husband to run affairs of the state, her love story with Jehangir was also about a meeting of minds (she was a 34 year old widow when they met and fell in love). The ultimate 17th century ‘Influencer’ and trendsetter, Nur Jahan started out as a Persian refugee, slowly becoming a sort of Coco Chanel of the harem, where she used her skills in dressmaking to become a sought after designer with the Mughal ladies. (She herself continued to dress quite simply). With the ingenious use of shadow work on fine local muslin, she also had Persian embroiderers create the first Chikankari fabrics. A talented architect with a deep sense of her l...

Extreme pain never left Frida's side, and flowed into her greatest paintings over and over. Crushed by polio as a child, she learned to wear long Mexican skirts to hide her limp and wasted leg. Barely surviving an accident with multiple fractures, she put herself together with leather braces and plaster casts. With an easel constructed so she could paint in bed, and regular morphine injected into her veins, painting became her singular outlet and form of expression. The exaggerated attention to her face with Mexican 'Maria' braids, flowers and jewellery was perhaps to take the attention away from her broken body. Although she rejected her Catholic roots, influences resurface in her art, more so in times of heightened pain. Frida's self portraits (a third of her entire body of work) were her way of holding a mirror to heartbreak, betrayal and suffering. Sometimes she is redeemed by her pet monkey Chango, and sometimes she bleeds out with no one to save her, like ...

  "I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland." The 'High Priestess of polka dots', Yayoi Kusama has lived in a world of hallucinations since she was a child. With infinite dots covering her canvases, rooms, objects and even her clothes, she has compulsively and single mindedly created art as a way to deal with constant trauma, pain, anxiety and fear. In 1977 she checked into a sanatorium in Tokyo as a means of dealing with her obsessive-compulsive neuroses. In her 90s now, she continues to live there and create art every single day, turning up at her studio in a wheelchair to sometimes work for 50-60 hour shifts. A state of mind she calls an "indescribable spell."

The Great Pyramids of Giza already over 1000 years old, 18th dynasty Egypt was a grand empire ruled by a 'divine' pharaoh, always a man*. And then there was Hatshepsut. Upon the death of Thutmose II, to whom she was main wife, she became regent to his son Thutmose III, a toddler when he came to the throne. For 7 years, Hatshepsut made all the right noises, and it was business as usual. Until one day, presenting herself in the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, she inscribed her statues with the full title of Pharaoh. She couldn’t, however, be king looking like a woman, so she donned a false beard, eventually depicting herself in full male form. After her unprecedented power grab, for the next 20 years Hatshepsut overtly continued to rule alongside the real (male) pharaoh Thutmose III, all the while being the one calling the shots. During her reign of peace and prosperity, she ushered in wealth, waged successful wars, and built on a massive sc...

Somewhere in Chennai of the 1930s, two teenage girls from traditional Hindu families sneaked into a studio to have their portraits taken in an avatar that they could surely never be seen in. With a face that exuded calm, and a demeanor so poised, dressed always in a traditional silk sari, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't truly exciting to see this famous picture of the legendary singer MS Subbulakshmi, dressed in a men's night suit, pretending to smoke an unlit cigarette. Here she is with the other legend, Bharatnatyam dancer Balasaraswati, the two of them audaciously breaking a few norms of their time. Growing up in Rishi Valley, a boarding school in South India, I internalized the very distinctive sounds of Carnatic music without realizing it. Some mornings at home, we still play her rendition of the Suprabhatam, and once again, her music enters our souls.

The Iconic Women Project is a platform for telling the stories of women through re-enactment, styling and writing. Women whose contributions have been immense, women from different walks of life, different eras and different parts of the world. This is an ongoing exploration of their lives and stories. An art project that hopes to provide a source of joy, inspiration and creativity to women (and everyone else) today. https://www.instagram.com/iconicwomenproject/ WHY RE-ENACTMENT? Re-enactment art is inherently powerful in its ability to move us. It forms a thread of continuity across people and eras, one that cannot easily be measured and mapped. It calls for the courage to become another, and to allow ourselves to go down that Rabbit Hole of curiosity. Because it is when we are curious that we observe, wanting to take a closer look. We wonder, we empathise, and in a quiet, sublimina...