I had stopped going to art galleries for a while after becoming a mother. I had disengaged with all creatively unpredictable external input like new books too as I wished to avoid being plunged into depths of sadness by art. But when there was a lovely gathering for an opening of a new exhibition in Sunaparanta, an art gallery in my beloved Panjim city, I decided to bravely venture out again with my husband and our young son, who was three years old by then. The chatter, the mingling and the wine at the launch event created a sense of heady excitement for me–and yet there was something lurking within, something to do with my fears about bringing a young child to an art space, which crystallized within minutes of walking into the gallery space.
I had been wanting to protect my child from a particular kind of art and we had walked straight into it. Art is often full of pain, it can be confronting,…
