Ladies Compartment: Six Indian Women Artists Reclaim Space, Silence, and Strength in Hamburg

What happens when six Indian women artists walk into a foreign city, carrying their inner compartments—stitched with memory, resilience, and rebellion? Something quiet, something seismic. Ladies Compartment, presented by Method (India) in collaboration with Galerie Melike Bilir, opens in Hamburg on June 24, 2025, and it’s far from just another exhibition. It’s an act of negotiation. Of arrival. Of slow, burning defiance.

Marking Method’s debut show in Germany, Ladies Compartment brings together six voices—Anushree Fadnavis, Avani Rai, Darshika Singh, Keerthana Kunnath, Krithika Sriram, and Shaheen Peer—each exploring the intersections of gender, public space, and the architecture of resilience through their own intimate visual vocabularies. The exhibition is part of India Week Hamburg 2025, supported by the Hamburg Senate and Hamburg’s Ministry of Culture and Media.

The Local Train as a Living Metaphor

The title Ladies Compartment is immediately evocative. For anyone who's ridden the Mumbai local, it brings to mind the sharp clang of metal, the whirr of fans, and the unspoken community that forms in the gender-segregated carriages carved out for women since 1907. But the metaphor goes beyond trains.

That space—both safe and segregated, freeing and limiting—becomes a larger question. When does protection become control? When does a boundary comfort, and when does it confine?

This tension drives the exhibition, not as a manifesto but as a mosaic of reflections. Through photography, mixed media, painting, and visual storytelling, the artists deconstruct the idea of 'compartments'—physical, emotional, and cultural. These are the spaces women are told to occupy, the ones they inherit, the ones they escape, and the ones they recreate on their own terms.

Quiet Power, Radical Honesty

“There’s something deeply radical about listening to silence,” says Sahil Arora, founder and curator of Method. “Ladies Compartment is a meditation on what it means to exist within systems of care and control, visibility and invisibility. We’re not trying to shout. We’re trying to hold space for truths that are lived but rarely acknowledged.”

Indeed, there’s no loud feminism here, no stylised resistance. Instead, what we see is quiet observation, embodied memory, and subtle reclamation. Anushree Fadnavis, known for her visual essays on Mumbai’s train culture, captures ephemeral moments of womanhood in transit. Avani Rai blends personal history with political landscapes. Darshika Singh and Krithika Sriram draw from lived experiences—where tradition becomes both language and labyrinth.

Shaheen Peer and Keerthana Kunnath reimagine the body as site, breath, and boundary. There’s strength in their stillness. There’s protest in their restraint.

Gendered Space, Global Gaze

At the core of this show is the question: How do women inhabit space—public, private, in-between? These spaces aren’t always physical. Sometimes they’re invisible, inherited, internal. The art does not prescribe answers; it offers presence.

Galerie Melike Bilir, with its commitment to showcasing experimental and female-identifying voices, provides the ideal setting. “This exhibition aligns with our vision of challenging dominant narratives around identity and belonging,” says Melike Bilir, founder of the Hamburg-based gallery located in the city’s art-rich Fleetinsel district. “We’re excited to create space for stories that are both specific and universal.”

The timing couldn’t be better. As global conversations around gender and public space evolve, Ladies Compartment contributes a distinctly South Asian lens—rooted in real textures, lived realities, and a refusal to simplify.

Method’s Expanding Cartography

For Method, this show is not just a milestone—it’s a manifesto.

With experimental roots in Mumbai and Delhi, Method Gallery has grown into one of India’s most compelling platforms for emerging artists. Their ethos—“art as conversation, not conclusion”—is woven into every curatorial gesture. From intimate exhibitions to large-scale art fairs like India Art Fair, Art Mumbai, and ARCO Lisboa, Method has quietly redefined what contemporary Indian art can look and feel like.

Their move into Europe with Ladies Compartment is both strategic and symbolic. It speaks to a desire to expand dialogues, without diluting the local.

“We’re not here to translate or explain India,” says Arora. “We’re here to be unapologetically nuanced—and trust that the work will find those who are ready to listen.”

The Compartment as Mirror

What does it mean to be visible in a world that still polices how women occupy space? Ladies Compartment doesn’t offer spectacle. It offers reflection. These works sit with you. They echo stories you’ve heard your mother mutter under her breath. They remind you of moments you never told anyone about—when silence felt like armour, or when stillness screamed.

This isn’t just about Indian women. It’s about the conditions of visibility. About what it means to exist, not as a statement, but as a steady, unflinching presence.

Exhibition Details

• Title: Ladies Compartment

• Opening Reception: June 24, 2025

• Dates: June 24 – July 20, 2025

• Venue: Galerie Melike Bilir, Fleetinsel, Hamburg

• Presented by: Method (India), in collaboration with Galerie Melike Bilir

• Artists: Anushree Fadnavis, Avani Rai, Darshika Singh, Keerthana Kunnath, Krithika Sriram, Shaheen Peer

• Website: https://themethod.art/