City student’s artwork breaks the myth of unrealistic beauty

When most kids played with toys, Manjukashika picked up the paint brush at the age of three. Seeing her interest in art, her parents enrolled the little prodigy in the Maven Art Academy when she turned six. “Seeing my interest in painting, my parents bought me various types of brushes and introduced me to the world of arts. Venmathi teacher from Maven Art Academy has been teaching me painting for many years. Art is one of my favourite subjects and I love experimenting with various mediums,” says Manjukashika.

The International Fine Art Contest was jointly organised by InKo Centre, Chennai and K-Art Busan. “It was an exciting opportunity to meet students from other countries. I met a lot of students and befriended some of them. 

Even though the language was a huge barrier (since most Koreans and Japanese don’t speak English), I could interact with them about our culture, lifestyle and so on,” she tells us. The youngster believes that an artist becomes successful when he/she could convey complex ideas through a single picture.

“A picture should convey its meaning more effectively than a description does. I haven’t mastered the art yet, but I am trying to be a better artist day-by-day. We didn’t have any theme or topic for the contest and were allowed to draw whatever comes to our mind.

 Many students drew about cultural aspects within India and Korea, social issues, environment, etc. I decided to draw about how women are breaking society’s faulty beauty standards. 

We have become trained to believe in the unrealistic standards of beauty set by our society. Though there are many campaigns about body positivity, many still believe that being skinny is beautiful and being fair is lovely. Unfortunately, these stereotypes dictate our mindset in a huge way,” rues the student.

In the painting that bagged Manjukashika an international prize, you can see a dark, bald woman breaking through a wall with broken shackles around her foot. “Our beauty standards are putting immense pressure on women everywhere. And art is one of the best mediums to create awareness on sensitive topics,” she sums up.