Poster Girls We Like

Spent some time this morning browsing Zubaan’s Poster Women exhibition online. Here’s what they’re trying to do:

The Poster Women project began with the idea of locating and archiving as many posters of the movement as possible.
The idea was to look at how the women’s movement and its concerns could be mapped visually, to ask what the history of the movement would look like through its posters and the visual images it had used. When we initiated this project we were convinced that it was important to collect and document posters from the movement also because while the women’s movement has been – and remains – an extremely rich, complex and multi-layered movement, it has never been very good at documenting itself. Many of the pamphlets the movement has generated have been lost, much material has been destroyed, and much is gathering dust in musty cupboards and drawers in different places.
When the project began, we had no idea it would catch on so fast, or that individuals and groups from all over the country would respond so enthusiastically. Posters began to pour in, in all kinds of shapes and sizes, some in very fragile condition, others wonderfully preserved. Many groups had no idea where their posters had gone, several said they had no time to locate posters as there were more pressing issues to deal with. Many knew they had this or that poster, but did not have the time to sift through endless piles of paper to locate them. Nonetheless, we managed to garner some 1500 posters and it is these that provided the base for this exhibition, and its accompanying catalogue.

There’s an online gallery; or drop in at the Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi. Exhibition’s on till April 6.