Method (India) is proud to present Ladies Compartment, an
exhibition of six Indian women artists, hosted in collaboration with Gallery Melike Bilir in Hamburg. This marks Method’s debut exhibition in
Germany, offering a powerful and nuanced meditation on gender, resilience,
and the negotiation of space through contemporary artistic practices.
Featuring works by Anushree Fadnavis,
Avani Rai, Darshika Singh, Keerthana Kunnath, Krithika Sriram, and Shaheen
Peer, the exhibition
draws its title from the gender-segregated carriages of Mumbai’s local
trains—introduced in 1907 to offer women a measure of safety and autonomy in an
otherwise male-dominated public sphere. Over a century later, these spaces
remain a potent symbol of paradox: at once refuge and restriction, sanctuary
and segregation. They embody the complex ways in which public space is mediated
through gender—offering protection while also reinforcing boundaries.
Ladies Compartment expands this metaphor into a broader lens
through which to examine how women inhabit, resist, and reimagine the many
compartments—literal, cultural, emotional—that shape their realities. These may
be physical environments, inherited traditions, coded gestures, or internalised
systems. The artists respond with forms of assertion, vulnerability,
observation, and embodied memory—revealing how, within these constructed
spaces, resilience is cultivated again and again.
The works ask: when does a boundary shield, and when does it isolate? What does
it mean to find power in silence, or connection in solitude? Through image,
pigment, form, and breath, the artists trace the architectures—visible and
invisible—that define movement, stillness, and identity.
“At Method, we’ve always been interested in the in-between—spaces that
are overlooked, stories that unfold quietly, power that isn’t always loud,”
says Sahil Arora, founder and curator of Method. “Ladies Compartment is exactly that: a meditation on what it means
to exist within systems of care and control, visibility and silence.
Collaborating with Gallery Melike Bilir allows us to extend these conversations
across borders while staying rooted in deeply personal and local experiences.”
Melike Bilir, founder of the Hamburg-based gallery, adds: “At Gallery
Melike Bilir, we are committed to creating space for voices that challenge and
expand the narratives around gender, identity, and public space. Ladies Compartment resonates deeply with
this ethos—offering an intimate yet powerful lens on resilience, visibility,
and the lived experiences of women navigating both real and symbolic
boundaries.”
Ladies Compartment is on view from June 24 to July 20, 2025, at
Gallery Melike Bilir, Fleetinsel, Hamburg.
The exhibition will take place as part of India Week Hamburg 2025. India Week Hamburg is a series of events
that has been highlighting the close ties between Hamburg and India since 2007.
It showcases the diversity of Indian culture and highlights topics from
politics, business, science, and society—with the aim of strengthening exchange
and cooperation. The exhibition is supported by the Hamburg Senate and the Hamburg
Ministry of Culture and Media.
About the Gallery
- Method
“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn
art introduced me to the Revolution!”
– Albert Einstein
Whether Einstein was referring to a political awakening or a
scientific upheaval, one thing is certain: art and the act of breaking away are
fundamentally entwined.
Method is a space that embraces both introspection and
“extrospection”—a way of engaging deeply with the self while also reaching
outward into the cultural, political, and sensory ecosystems that shape our
time. We believe that art is not just about creation but about conversation,
transformation, and the continuous undoing of form and certainty. To create is
to take a position—fluid, shifting, and alive.
At its core, Method is committed to nurturing young and emerging
practices. Our programming focuses on giving artists a platform at early stages
of their careers—offering visibility, critical engagement, and a space to take
risks. We prioritise fresh voices that challenge conventional narratives and
expand the scope of contemporary art across disciplines, mediums, and contexts.
With galleries in Mumbai and New Delhi, Method operates as a dynamic
ecosystem for experimentation, conversation, and collaboration. We champion
practices that are conceptual, community-rooted, and bold in their departure
from norms—regularly dissolving boundaries between the visual, performative,
digital, and material.
Over the years, Method has grown beyond the physical space to become a
platform for dialogue and discovery. We have participated in major national and
international art fairs such as India Art Fair, Art Mumbai, and ARCO Lisboa,
and continue to forge collaborations with artists, collectives, and
institutions across geographies.
Method is less about arriving at answers and more about facilitating
open-ended inquiries. We see ourselves as a space of friction and
fluidity—where experimentation is encouraged, multiplicity is celebrated, and
the revolution of thought, feeling, and form is always underway.
About the Gallery
- Galerie Melike Bilir
Galerie Melike Bilir is a contemporary
art space located in the heart of Hamburg, on the culturally significant
Fleetinsel. Positioned at the intersection of commercial gallery and curatorial
experiment, the gallery presents work by both international and local artists
who engage with pressing social issues and challenge conventional modes of
perception.
The program focuses on experimental and conceptual practices spanning
painting, installation, performance, and new media. Central to the gallery’s
curatorial approach are artistic practices that explore themes such as origin,
the body, language, and belonging.
Particular emphasis is placed on collaborations with female and
female-identifying artists, as well as with curators whose perspectives
actively shape the gallery’s direction.
Galerie Melike Bilir is committed to long-term collaborations,
individual artistic development, and a curatorial practice that creates space
for openness, critical discourse, and artistic autonomy, both through
independent projects and sustained partnerships.
Artist’s Bios and their works
'Ladies Compartment' Method's showcase in
Hamburg, Germany
About Anushree
Fadnavis
Anushree Fadnavis is a Pulitzer prize winning
photojournalist with Reuters news agency and is currently based out of New
Delhi, India. Her work has been published in major Indian and international
print and online forums, including BBC, The New York Times, Washington Post,
The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Week, Open Magazine, The Hindu, Hindustan
Times, Scroll, The Indian Express, DNA, Creative Image (founded by renowned
photographer Raghu Rai), Arts Illustrated, the online gallery of Katha
Collective, and Life on Instagram 2017 (Penguin UK). She has worked on a
project in Mumbai, India, by the National Film Board of Canada. She held a
month-long residency at Galleri Image, Aarhus, and was a panelist at the Indian
Photography Festival, Hyderabad in 2016. Anushree's personal ongoing work from
the ladies compartment in Mumbai local trains called '#traindiaries' , where
she documents the daily lives of the women commuters around her along with her
own personal / visual experiences lies close to her heart. It's an ongoing work
for the last 10 years.
#traindiaries by Anushree Fadnavis
John Berger says in his book Ways
of Seeing: “A woman must continually watch herself... From earliest
childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And
so, she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two
constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.”
Women are always surrounded by men—at home, in the office, or in
public spaces. The Mumbai local train’s ladies compartment becomes a unique
space that feels like it has been specifically designed for them—a space devoid
of men. I feel women use this space to liberate themselves from any male gaze,
or at least I have.
Each of my experiences in local trains has led me to begin a new
journey, one of sharing these stories with the world. Through this virtual
diary, shot on phone, I explore how humans engage and familiarize themselves
with spaces by building relationships with complete strangers who eventually become
close friends. The train itself became my inspiration.
#traindiaries, my project, is a journal of photos and
observations that I experience every day in the ladies compartment. I wanted to
capture the essence of my travel, the relationships I forged, my own visual
affair, and most importantly—the people. I realized we don’t need to travel to
distant places to find human interest stories, as there is always a new one on
the same train on a different day.
This project has helped me get closer to understand the people,
especially the women, of Mumbai. It has given me an outlet for my creativity.
It has led to the realization that you can find art and beauty in simple things
around you, just through the power of observation.
The ladies compartment of the Mumbai local gives women a sense of
freedom and belonging in a room where they are accompanied by strangers.
Sometimes it begins to resemble a theatre, where various actors come and
act—and I, along with the viewers of the images, am the audience who seeks to
learn about our own lives through the lives of others.
About Avani Rai
A photographer based out of Mumbai, Avani Rai has worked as a camera
person on a number of short films. She has worked in fiction and documentary.
As a photographer she has done serious photo essays on Bhopal gas tragedy and
its after effects even after 35 long years, the Kashmir story, Chennai water
Crisis and many others.
Her photographic works have been published in various reputed
publications - Indian and international - such as GQ, Vogue, Architectural
Digest, The Wire, The Hearst, The platform, Sunday Guardian, Scroll and many
others. Her recent work, a film directed/shot by her, 'Raghu Rai-An Unframed
Portrait’ (also her father) is based on his photographic journey which captures
the history of India over the past 50 years,which she experienced through his
images. Kashmir, also featured in the film is her first-hand experience, which
she shared with him in the course of making the film. The dot series is her
first foray into art photography.
Women Of Gurdaspur by Avani Rai
Avani Rai’s photographic practice is rooted in
memory, experience, and the act of witnessing. For her, photography is not
merely a means of documentation, but a way of understanding the world—and
herself within it. She describes the camera as a tool that affirms experience;
without the image, a moment risks feeling as though it never truly happened.
For the past three years, Rai has been
photographing Punjab—her ancestral home. Though she spent her childhood visiting
her grandmother there, the process of returning as an adult and photographing
the land has transformed her relationship with it. What once felt distant now
feels deeply familiar. Her repeated visits and continued image-making have
allowed her to see Punjab not only as a place of origin but as a living archive
of personal and collective history.
Through this body of work, she captures the
resonance of memory in the present moment. The photographs function as
palimpsests—layered with past and present, memory and immediacy. Initially
approaching the region as an observer, Rai’s sustained engagement gradually
gave way to a renewed sense of belonging. Her lens now moves between the
objective and the subjective, listening to the unspoken language of nature, of
gazes, of gestures exchanged in silence.
Women of Gurdaspur is both a portrait of a place
and a meditation on home—a home that speaks across generations through land,
people, and the quiet power of presence.
About Darshika
Singh
Darshika She has Design, approach Singh (b. Lucknow) works across
video and paintings. The current work focuses on: rhyme, rhythm &
repetition; the absurd and the ambient.
Darshika has a background in Art, Fashion and Philosophy. Her general
approach involves the exploration of the Self through repetitive gestures and
simple geometrical shapes interacting with a personal lexicon of symbols.
She has been a part of multiple group exhibitions with Method and has
shown her work in various cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Philadelphia and
London. She is currently a part of Conditions Online Programme (2024-25).
In A Single Thought by Darshika Singh
In a Single Thought is a video work by Darshika
Singh, an interdisciplinary artist based in Mumbai. Singh's practice focuses on
the metaphysical and symbolic aspects of perception, aiming to elevate the
mundane into the essential. While specific details about this video are
limited, Singh's work often explores the intersection of the perceptible and
the metaphysical, inviting viewers to engage with deeper layers of meaning.
About Keerthana Kunnath
Keerthana Kunnath (b. 1995, Kerala) is a visual
artist based between London and India. Her interdisciplinary practice
interrogates the visual language of post-colonial Indian mainstream media,
reworking dominant narratives to question entrenched social structures. Through
photography, video, and collaborative processes, she explores the intimate intersections
of queerness, community, and memory.
Deeply rooted in both personal and collective
histories, Kunnath’s work is shaped by ongoing engagement with local
communities and familial archives. Her projects often emerge from immersive,
personal experiences, foregrounding lived realities while examining broader
socio-political landscapes. She frequently returns to India to explore
overlooked narratives, investigating how identity is constructed, inherited,
and performed.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at
institutions including Fujifilm House of
Photography (London), Photoworks Weekender
(Bristol), Chennai Photo Biennale, Palm Photo Prize (London, Amsterdam), Apre
Art Gallery (Mumbai), Hase 29 (Germany), and the Photo Frome Festival, among
others.
She is the recipient of the RPS IPE 166 Under 30
Award and in 2024, was recognised as one of the Top 50 Young Creatives globally
by the British Fashion Council and listed in CulturedMagazine’s 25 Young
Photographers to Watch.
Not What You Saw by Keerthana Kunnath
Not What You Saw is a photographic series by Keerthana Kunnath
that centers on female bodybuilders—women whose bodies defy the conventional
ideals of femininity within Indian visual culture. Through her lens, Kunnath
disrupts the viewer’s gaze, reframing muscularity and physical dominance not as
symbols of masculinity, but as extensions of feminine agency and care. The
photographs are intimate, textured, and unapologetically bold, revealing bodies
in states of exertion, vulnerability, pride, and reflection. These women are
not posed as spectacle—they are grounded, present, and commanding. Kunnath’s
framing avoids sensationalizing the body; instead, it focuses on the emotional
and lived landscape beneath the skin: the effort, discipline, and quiet
resistance that shapes these forms.
By isolating her subjects from stereotypical narratives of athleticism
or beauty, Kunnath constructs a space where strength and tenderness coexist.
There is a reverence in the way light touches flesh, and a deep political
undercurrent in the way these bodies occupy space. The title, Not What You Saw, is a deliberate
provocation—it questions the assumptions we carry when we encounter a woman’s
body, especially one that contradicts softness or passivity. It suggests that
looking is not seeing, and that seeing must be unlearned. This series is not
just about bodybuilding—it is about rebuilding how we look, and what we think
we know about femininity and power.
About Krithika
Sriram
Krithika Sriram is a visual artist and photographer whose work
explores identity, memory, and representation through images and text. Her
practice often engages with personal and political histories, particularly
those connected to caste and gender.
Her work has been shown at Photo 2024 in Melbourne and at exhibitions
and screenings across India and internationally. She is currently based in
Bangalore, India.
Kuvalai Anthotypes by Krithika Shriram
Anthotypes are images created using
photosensitive material from plants. The following images are self-portraits,
created using rose pigments. These prints as objects, seek to be reminders of
the significance of the Dalit female body in the politics of ancient and
contemporary India. Roses, flowers in general were once banned for Dalit
females in Tamilnadu, a southern state in India. By employing this material to
create images of my body (a Dalit female), I intend to subvert the role of this
material in my ancestral history and identity.
The Dalit, female form is at the center of caste
oppression. The entire system of hierarchy within the caste system has been
founded on the bodies of women. Controlling women and their sexuality has been
the foundation of the caste system, as explained by Dr.Br Ambedkar, who
analyses caste as the product of sustained endogamy.
The Anthotypes themselves, much like the fleeting
nature of societal attention, are temporary. They mirror the transient
acknowledgment afforded to the Dalit female, whose plight at the bottom of the
Hindu-Indian social order is either conveniently forgotten or willfully
ignored. These prints, with their gradual fade into obscurity, parallel the
persistent erasure of the Dalit female narrative from the collective
consciousness.
About Shaheen Peer
Shaheen Peer is a Bangalore-based
photographer and creative director working across fashion, fine art, and
portraiture. Raised in Chennai, her practice is rooted in familiarity—centering
people, textures, and gestures that echo the environments she grew up in.
Image-making is her playground for engaging with the cultural
landscape, expanding ideas of representation, and shaping stories that feel
personal and true. Her approach is grounded in a deep fascination with gesture,
colour, and the materiality of cloth, casting an intentional and deliberate
gaze on the people and narratives she frames.
Her work has been featured in Vogue,
NOWNESS, and Hyperallergic, and exhibited at The Method (Mumbai), 1018 Gallery
(London), and Tate Modern Lates.
Self Portraits by Shaheen Peer
This series of self-portraits by Shaheen Peer brings together two
distinct influences—personal memory and a fascination with the body and the
materiality of cloth. These elements converge to form sculptures of flesh and
fabric, shaped by the weight and warmth of memory.
At the centre of this exploration is the saree. Draped in a style that
recalls a pre-British era, without a blouse, it evokes a sense of timelessness
reminiscent of ancient stone sculptures. The saree becomes a vessel for storytelling,
examining how fabric can reveal emotion, carry symbolism, and convey cultural
memory.
By omitting the face, Peer redirects the viewer’s gaze toward form,
colour, and texture—toward the body as a site of narrative rather than identity
alone. These self-portraits are less about being seen and more about what can
be felt and remembered through material.
Ultimately, the series reflects on how textiles hold memory, how
bodies can speak without words, and how identity lives in the space between
self and fabric.
Exhibition Details :
Title: Ladies Compartment
Opening Reception: June 24, 2025
Exhibition Dates: June 24 – July 20, 2025
Venue: Gallery Melike Bilir, Fleetinsel, Hamburg
Presented by: Method (India), in collaboration with Gallery Melike Bilir
Artists: Anushree Fadnavis, Avani Rai, Darshika Singh, Keerthana Kunnath,
Krithika Sriram, Shaheen Peer
