A woman squats, centred and grounded. She holds a sword, a historical symbol of violence and conquest, now transformed into an object of domesticity and pleasure. With biting irony and sensual assertion, T. Venkanna reimagines the sword not as a weapon of aggression but as an object of domesticity and pleasure. The aubergine, a stand-in for the phallus, is not destroyed but handled, redirected, controlled. The other suggests an act of self-satisfaction.

This figure is neither a femme fatale nor a passive muse; she is an autonomous subject attending to her desires. “I use sex as a metaphor to talk about larger issues,” says the artist. “It’s not about portraying sex as a mindless activity. That’s not my concern or intent.” In this work, sex becomes a language for critiquing patriarchy, power, and historical violence. She Knows the Right Way to Use It is not a provocation but a portrait of self-possession and embodied resistance.