Abandoned and Overlooked, These Women Made Art That Went From a Delhi Shelter to a Delhi Gallery

Guddu bent over the vase in front of her, her eyes fixed on its surface. Around her, the room moved with colour, sound and activity — brushes being passed around, clay being shaped, fabric being sorted, voices rising and falling. But Guddu stayed with her work.

Slowly, patiently, she moved the brush across the vase she had created. There was no hurry in her hand, no need to explain what she was making. The act itself seemed to hold her attention completely.

For many days before this, Guddu had stayed at the edges of the room. She did not meet anyone’s gaze, did not speak much, did not reach out. She watched the others from a distance, present but apart. Then, with gentle encouragement and without pressure, she stepped closer one day and picked up a brush.

Guddu was one of 15 women with intellectual disabilities who participated in What Is Love?, a five-month-long art and healing initiative led by the Society for Child Development. Through ceramics, textiles and painting, the women were given space to explore emotion, memory and identity.

For Madhumita Puri, founder of Society for Child Development, the experience began with a simple idea about selfhood.

“Love begins with knowing who you are, and then accepting that self,” she says.

“With this project, we went in not assuming anything. It was not just a discovery for the women; it was a discovery of them by us as well.”

Guiding the women through these months were artists Suparna Arora in ceramics, Shalini Dutt in textiles, and Sujata Das in painting. Rather than beginning with a fixed idea of what the women should create, they brought clay, fabric and colour into the room and allowed the process to take shape around each participant. 

The women live in a government-run shelter for women with intellectual disabilities, many of whom have been abandoned by their families. 

The facility, Madhumita says, is clean, spacious and well-run. But care cannot end with infrastructure. There are inner worlds too — memories, longings, anger, joy, ownership, affection that often remain unseen.

“These are people who are often seen as charity cases,” Madhumita says. 

“But there is so much more to them than what is visible on the surface. There are thoughts, feelings, opinions, all buried under distress.”

15 women, 3 artists & 5 months of making Art 

For Madhumita, who has worked in the disability space for over three decades, the idea came from a growing discomfort with conventional approaches.

“I felt we had to go beyond trying to fit round pegs into square holes,” she says.

Instead of having the process led by an educator, administrator or psychologist, she wanted artists to enter the space — people who could guide the women not through correction or expectation, but through creative engagement.

The name, What Is Love? A Journey to Find the Self, came from the belief that love and identity are deeply connected.

“That is the first point of reference for a person — understanding and knowing who you are,” Madhumita says. 

“And secondly, how much you love who you are. If a person is rooted in acceptance of the self, then that acceptance will be felt by others around them.”

The project was planned as a pilot. There would be 15 women, three artists and support staff from the institution. But while there was a broad outline, the team knew the process had to remain open.

‘How do I get out of this?’ became ‘Why did I ever doubt?’ 

For Shalini Dutt, who works with textiles and has experience in education, workshops and therapeutic art spaces, the invitation was exciting but also intimidating.

“It seemed such an exciting opportunity,” she recalls. “I was immediately grateful that somebody picked me. But I was also nervous because I had not worked with a project of this kind before.”

She had worked with neurodivergent children and people with different needs, but this felt different. The women were adults. Many had experienced abandonment. Their moods, memories and responses could not be predicted.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” Shalini says. 

“There was an internal fear: would we be able to handle it? But it was so beautiful going there because they were so open, so loving. They were just happy to see that people had come.”

Suparna Arora, a studio potter with nearly 30 years of experience, felt the same. The first day overwhelmed her.

“For the first half an hour, I was thinking, how do I get out of this?” she admits. “But from the second day, when we started working with clay, I wondered why I ever had a doubt.”

What helped was the absence of pressure. The women were not asked to produce perfect objects. They were not judged on neatness or technique. They were simply offered materials and space.

When the plan went out the window

The five-month workshop did not begin with perfect attendance or eager participation. Some days, a few women would be missing. On other days, someone would quietly say that they had done such work before but did not feel like making anything at the moment. A few knew how to use the pottery wheel yet had no interest in touching it that day.

Slowly, the artists came to understand that each woman moved at her own rhythm, guided by mood, memory, and willingness rather than by instruction.

“Initially, we thought this is how we will do it, this is what the final result will be,” Shalini says. “Everything went out the window. We just played with the whole project.”

At times, it was frustrating. But it was also revealing.

“They had so much inside them,” she says. “All they needed was a little space, some nudging and guiding.”

For Suparna, clay became a powerful medium because it allowed the women to work directly with their hands. She soon realised that the women were not waiting to be taught in the conventional sense.

“I probably was just the medium to give them clay,” she says. “They came up with such brilliant things on their own.”

Some made elephants, one after another, within a two-hour session. One participant shaped forms that resembled prawns, drawing from memories of farming in her village. Others made Ganeshas unlike the familiar image — slim, flat-stomached, and playful.

“If I gave clay to 10,000 people and asked them to make an elephant, most would struggle because they would want it to look perfect,” Suparna says. “But these women just made them. The confusion was in my head, not theirs.”

What lipstick, clay and yarn began to reveal 

One of the strongest themes that emerged was identity.

One day, several women appeared wearing bright pink and red lipstick. Their hair is kept short for hygiene reasons, and they wear simple clothes they can manage. So the lipstick became striking — a small but powerful act of adornment.

“They were so particular,” Shalini recalls. “Bring me earrings, bring me a bracelet, bring me a clip.”

This moment led to the idea of making masks with hair. The women first shaped clay faces. Then they used fabric and yarn to create hair for them.

At first, they were cautious. The hair was neat and controlled. But when encouraged to make it the way they wanted, something changed.

“There were no holds barred,” Shalini says. “One-and-a-half metre-long hair was being made. Someone wanted it open, someone wanted it wild. It was cathartic.”

The centre was home to several bright and creative young women between the ages of 18 and 20. Among them, some stories of transformation and growing confidence stood out more deeply than others. 

One such story was that of Preeti. Skilled, competitive and headstrong, she focused only on what she knew she could do well. She refused to try weaving because she believed she could not do it. But whenever she completed a piece, she clapped proudly and showed everyone around her.

Shalu, who is deaf and non-verbal, worked with intense focus. Once she understood a technique, she guarded her creations and resisted interference. During one installation, after settling into her own work, she noticed Guddu struggling. Without being asked, she began helping her — managing her own wheel while guiding Guddu on another.

It was a small moment of leadership, generosity and mastery.

Parvati, one of the older women, brought steadiness to the room. With hearing and speech impairments, she naturally looked out for the others, gently scolding anyone who strayed, keeping things in order, and holding the group together like an older sister.

Some days brought fights. Others ended in song 

The journey was not always easy or sentimental. Some women came in cheerful one day and withdrawn the next. Sometimes there were fights. Once, a major argument broke out because one participant had worked on another person’s frame.

There was also laughter. Someone would suddenly break into a Bollywood song while working with clay, and soon the room would join in. For Suparna, this made the experience deeply human.

“I have seen them very chirpy and excited one day, and then very low another day,” she says. “But we are also like that. Underneath, I think we are all the same at some level.”

Five months of work entered a public gallery 

After months of making, the works were presented at the India Habitat Centre from 28 to 31 March 2026. Clay pieces, textiles and paintings, created in different sessions, came together in a way that surprised even the artists. 

“It looked like everything had been planned together,” Shalini says.

For Madhumita, the exhibition gave the women a public space for their work and offered the world a window into lives that are often unseen.

“The first hypothesis of this programme was that there is more beyond the surface,” she says. “And what this programme meant to say was yes, that hypothesis was rooted in reality.”

The show offered glimpses rather than a complete picture of who the women were. Five months could reveal only so much: memory, longing, humour, confidence, frustration, care and selfhood.

Could this model work in other shelters too? 

For Madhumita and the team, What Is Love? is only a beginning. Its strength lies in its simplicity. It used low-cost materials, did not require heavy equipment, and allowed each participant to move at her own pace.

That makes it possible to imagine the model in other spaces too — shelters, institutions, community centres, and programmes for persons with disabilities.

The initiative matters because it challenges the way we often view people with intellectual disabilities. Too often, they are seen only through care, charity or limitation. Art offers another way of seeing them, as creators and as individuals with taste, memory, emotion and imagination. 

Expression does not always arrive in words. Confidence does not always look loud, and healing does not always announce itself.

Sometimes, it appears with a brush held with care, in a clay figure shaped from memory, in yarn made into long, flowing hair, or in one woman helping another complete her work.

Art, at its most honest, does not ask who is ‘able’ enough to create. It simply asks for space. And when that space is given, what emerges is beautiful.

All images courtesy Society for Child Development team

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com