Basita Shah

You got to believe you can make a difference. And as an artist, you have to spread with your art things people dismiss. The aches of love. The tides of extremities of women, their beauty. The resentment of the Kashmiri.
I spill what I can’t keep inside through my brushstrokes and my toil, and hope it makes a difference. Though I study architecture, have worked and traveled in the beautiful Ladakh as an intern architect, my heart shall always reside in art and I hope to see more of this world through it.

I paint for the love inside women. I believe women were always vessels, holders of sustenance, of life, and love. I paint for their aches of patience when they are abandoned. Their bravery as they stand tall as a tree, their leaves giving shade as their roots threaten to rot. I paint for the life they grow inside them. As their bellies swell to make blossom a new life, the magic of it seems other-worldly. Having a child of my own someday is a dream, I’d fight every day of my life to earn it and cherish it. Hold the person whom I bear close to me, shape him or her into a beautiful human being.

I paint to break rules. I believe no one in this world is right and no one is wrong. I believe in uniformity of sex, colour and religion. I believe society’s rules and taboos are baseless, I believe in creating my own world.
I believe in doing new things, in experimenting and trying to achieve the perfect picture by using different mediums and techniques of painting.

And sometimes I paint for my land. Everyday I hear of people dying, of eyes being robbed of their sights, of women being assaulted in their own homes by the Indian Army, of minors being taken into custody without first being tried in the court of law. As helpless as I feel, art is the only outlet for all my anger and all my sadness. Art is the means I hope I can carry the message of the injustice done to the people of my land to people all over the world with. My art depicts our pain.

You got to believe you can make a difference. And as an artist, you have to spread with your art things people dismiss. The aches of love. The tides of extremities of women, their beauty. The resentment of the Kashmiri.

I spill what I can’t keep inside through my brushstrokes and my toil, and hope it makes a difference. Though I study architecture, have worked and traveled in the beautiful Ladakh as an intern architect, my heart shall always reside in art and I hope to see more of this world through it.

I was schooled by Presentation Convent Senior School. I am currently studying architecture and landscape design in SMVDU Katra (year 4). I did an architecture internship under Tibet Heritage Fund, supported by the Finland Embassy, in Ladakh.

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