Created alongside Enlightened Mother, this early stained- glass work explores the emotional and structural potential of glass at monumental scale. Strong color contrasts and backlighting heighten its direct, confrontational presence. Drawn from the artist’s observations along the ghats of the Ganga, the work reflects the fate of widows- often banished to ashrams and exploited, including being forced into prostitution- exposing a harsh reality beneath ritualized devotion.
This paired work emerged from the artist’s time at the burning ghats of Varanasi- where devotion, grief, beauty, and neglect exist simultaneously. Working at architectural scale, Bakshi turned to stained glass for its ability to both reveal and wound: light passes through the surface without softening it. Brutal, radiant, and unforgiving, the material allows illumination to coexist with sharpness, mirroring the moral clarity and violence of the place itself. These were the artist’s first stained- glass works, created experimentally, with scale, light, and material leading the narrative.
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