By Sharanya Gopinathan

Sam Madhu is a 22-year-old New York based artist who used to live in Chennai. Since around July 2016, she’s been posting the kind of fantastic, trippy, woman-centric art that makes your brain sizzle (in a good way).

Her art features alcohol, sex, masturbation and drugs, and generally feels a lot more real than the kinds of images we usually see, even the ones that are meant to be inspiring. Her women don’t always look like they’re about to take the world head on or similarly energising stuff, but they just often portray the reality of being a woman.

Until they don’t, of course. She’s also inspired by pop culture icons and mythology, and is particularly interested in the Hindu goddess Kali. Her new series plans to centre goddess Kali, whom she sees as a “symbol of female power, sexuality, destruction and independence.”

Other pieces of her work flip the bird to prevailing standards of beauty, body image and morality. We can’t say if her art is meant to be empowering or not, but it’s a nice departure from the way Indian artists portray Indian women.

And as Andre Borges wrote for Buzzfeed India, a lot of her images are perfect to send as responses to sexist Whatsapp messages.

Check out the rest of her work on her Instagram page.