At Protsahan India Foundation, creating art isn’t an extracurricular activity; it’s survival. Within the urban slums of Delhi, teenage girls pick up brushes not just to paint but to reclaim their own stories. They look to the fierce beauty of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and the resolution and resilience of Indian teachers and social reformers Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh not as icons but as mirrors.
“When I met Frida on the canvas … something in me opened” shares 17-year-old Deepa. “She didn’t hide her face. She didn’t wait to be approved. And for the first time, I thought maybe I don’t need to be approved … Maybe I can be a little messy, a little unsure … and still be whole.”
Deepa is one of a number of migrant girls aged 15 to 18 who have participated in Protsahan’s storytelling and art workshops. Within these feminist spaces, trauma-informed facilitators and artists introduce girls to self-expression and self-reflection as a way to challenge social norms governing women’s relationships with their bodies, politics, and identity.
