“With words, you can say anything. You can lie as long as the day, but you cannot lie in the recreation of an experience.”
~ Louise Bourgeois
Hamida’s work is a journey, a road leading towards the unconscious land where dreams are a mystery, experiences are pages of a notebook, and existence is a surreal drama.
Being raised in a patriarchal society, she has noticed and witnessed a woman being caged, suffering and silencing her fears, choking her aspirations, in order to survive. Khatri’s artistic response defines these circumstances through varied artistic media. Such sentiments emerge as female bodies that have rationally and irrationally, physically and emotionally, been the victims of abuse and trauma. In one of the TED Talks (2010), Eve Ensler shared her thoughts about being a female:
“Being a girl is so powerful that we have trained everyone not to be that.”
Khatri’s work also responds to female objectification and depicts how male-dominancy affects the individuality of a woman. For her, a woman’s body is an emotional baggage that is destined to physical transformations. Such changes are driven by the uncontrollable need to express, which as a result – psychologically and physiologically – transfigures the body in the process. Those struggling moments, as a result, generate a mutative response. She, therefore, captures those instances and depicts it through her art practice.
She dedicates her work to all the women who display strength even in the most defeated circumstances.
