Bernadette Da Cunha

Bernadette Da Cunha was born in 1964 in Bombay. She graduated from St Xavier’s College in Bombay with an MA in Sociology. 

Self-taught, Da Cunha’s career is multifaceted – she is an artist, photographer, writer, and filmmaker. Her work was the only Indian entry at the prestigious 10th International Nude Art Show held at the Museum of New Art, Parnu, Estonia in 2003. At the show she displayed a work titled ‘Man and Woman – Naked Before God’, she presented two digitally enhanced images where she had used two pictures: one a monument and the other a nude figure. 

Da Cunha’s show ‘Parisienne Boudoir – 1920’ at Hacienda Art Gallery in Bombay, was inspired by erotic art in Paris. It presented photographs made from gel emulsion glass plates on fibre paper and sepia-toned archival prints, meant to celebrate an era of decadence and romantic seduction. She chose to re-photograph what she found in Paris, because to her the ‘Parisienne Boudoir’ represents an era of sexual emancipation – where harlots and courtesans were raised to the ranks of the aristocracy and wielded enormous power as royal mistresses. Each segment presented its own narrative in a boudoir; The ‘Gods become Men’ piece featured digitally manipulated photographs of a God-like figure who has descended on Earth. 

Presently, Da Cunha is the director at TVW International, a media production company in Bombay.