Gender and empowerment—how this Museum of Goa exhibition explores new creative frontiers
In this photo essay from Goa, we showcase highlights of an exhibition by Chaitali Morajkar and Harshada Kerkar.
Launched in 2014, PhotoSparks is a weekly feature from YourStory, with photographs that celebrate the spirit of creativity and innovation. In the earlier 875 posts, we featured an art festival, cartoon gallery. world music festival, telecom expo, millets fair, climate change expo, wildlife conference, startup festival, Diwali rangoli, and jazz festival.
This month, the Museum of Goa is hosting a provocative exhibition by two artists, titled What Women Carry. See our earlier coverage of exhibitions at this museum from 2022 onwards here.
“This exhibition is about more than weight. It is about legacy, resistance and change. It encourages reflection on what it means to be a woman today,” museum director Sharada Kerkar tells YourStory.
The exhibition showcases the works of Chaitali Morajkar and Harshada Kerkar. The featured baskets and pots, in which women carry a range of loads, are symbolic of the roles and burdens that women carry in their daily lives, as well as their aspirations.
Each installation and drawing makes viewers pause and reflect on the stories behind the artworks. Kerkar’s creations are in charcoal and graphite, while Morajkar’s imagery is painted on the backs of earthen pots.
Together, the artworks reveal the vastness of womanhood, right from struggles and strengths to dreams and freedoms. Combining humour and heaviness, the exhibition depicts the culture of Goa while also evoking broader connections. 
Through everyday scenes, the artworks carry strong messages, literally and metaphorically. The exhibition, on the second floor of the museum, is a blend of ethnography, art and social commentary.
Kerkar’s pieces address more than what is carried in the physical baskets balanced on the women’s heads. They include not just vegetables and fish but elements of domesticity such as brooms, bottles and jars.
“When I think about the women I have met in my life, I see their quiet strength. This exhibition is a way to acknowledge their resilience,” Kerkar says. Sharada Kerkar
Morajkar’s work elevates the kudnem, the traditional Goan pot, into a surface for painting and storytelling. She wants her artworks to make people think about what freedom looks like. “For me, art is about transformation,” she says.
Together, Kerkar and Morajkar weave an artistic and social dialogue across mediums, textures, and emotions. The elements of physical weight carried are not reduced in a binary manner to romanticisation or victimhood, but reflect the paths of empowerment and aspiration, according to the curatorial note penned by Nilankur Das.
The nuances and textures of the exhibits offer varying perspectives on social positioning, metaphors, and power equations. “The exhibition invites a kind of thinking that is felt before it is understood,” curator Sharada Kerkar signs off.
Now what have you done today to pause in your busy schedule and harness your creative side for a better world? Ahasthya A, Exhibition Coordinator
(All photographs were taken by Madanmohan Rao on location at the Museum of Goa.)
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
