Mask of Devadasi, Daughter of Kali #1

The portraits in “The Daughters of Kali” are women who perform sex acts in photos and videos that populate the world wide web. They are the sex goddesses we desirously worship in the privacy of our own homes, and disenfranchised women who are excluded by society. Here in these paintings I imply the Hindu Goddess Kali as a metaphor of the all consuming aspect of reality for these women. The mythological aspect of their existence as a play of universal energy in eternity. As daughters of Kali, they are sex goddesses who absorb our desires. Their images alone enslave our senses and subdue the collective libido into a state of complacency. But who are these heavenly creatures when they live among us as human beings? They are shadowy figures deprived of identities, and many are victims of the brutal enterprise of human merchandise, often used up and forgotten within a few years. The plight of their existence is a human tragedy in the divine drama. I combine eroticism with horror to illuminate the psychological and physical violence of sex in love’s absence. These paintings explore the shadows cast between our secret desires and moral dilemma.