Code: WH_OH_009_AUD_S5(C2)
Career trajectory, feminist standpoint and social reach
Summary:Through the national and international trips that Hema Sankalia took, she gained several impactful influences. He recalls how although she was cosmopolitan, she also rejected the hysteria around global influences after having returned to Pune in her retirement years and adopted a conservative way of thought. He draws her life on a trajectory from a global position to a more provincial point in Pune and he goes into detail about her life after retirement. He maps her career and journey till she wound up her practice in 1995. Moving on to a dear friend and contemporary of Hema Sankalia, he talks about the projects that Ar. Kirit Vora landed during the post-liberalization phase in India. In response to a question on her feminist standpoint, he notes how she couldn’t fully intellectualize the feminist movement but simply wanted to convey that a woman must negotiate the male-dominated space. Whereas he notes how she continued to employ, inspire and empower women in her daily practice, but that she also did so with her male counterparts. He remarks how it is impossible to compare her practice with her male contemporaries such as Charles Correa due to the stark difference in the support structures that were available to either gender.
On mapping timelines, he notes how there was a complete shift in terms of availability of capital and resources from the 70s-80s to the 90s-early 2000s, and remarks how it was the skill and implementation that mattered more than the technology. He mentions the Bhakle House which is superior to many of its time and even compared to projects of today regardless of the technology available. Concluding on how she was lucky to have contacts that led her to many significant projects and her dynamics with government projects she took on, he talks about her wide reach while he compares it to the reach and access to projects practitioners have today.
Hema Sankalia
Tanu Sankalia
Ishita Shah
00.30.10
Online
02/08/2021
English
2000-2009
(00:03:10) The provincial and traditional life of Hema Sankalia post-retirement , (00:13:14) Ambivalent approach to feminism