Portfolio > Paintings

The female body featured is the figure of a woman extracted from Jacques-Louis David's The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799), in which the acts of women during a bloody battle promote understanding between the King of Rome and the Sabines. By appropriating one of the women from David's piece, Abichandani launches a critique of the artist's choice to use women's bodies for acts of violent reconciliation. The work relates to the rape and murder by Allied troops in Afghanistan of a 15 year old girl, here recontextualised and commenting on the violent repetition of history, and the brutal objectification of women and their bodies.