Life is made of small moments and a few life-altering ones. So is the work.
Painting, installation, printmaking, photography, film, writing. Discovering a new medium during a project is part of the process, as crucial as the idea itself.
But if the idea is interesting enough, I'll do it.
2018 · drawn live on a blackboard wall · film of the making, 1 min · private collection
Acrylic on canvas · 2 × 2 ft each · private collection, Pune
Eye — 2018 · ink on paper · commission
Schizophrenic Brain Scans — copper plate etching, 6 × 4 in. Paris.
#NotToBeExcused · NTBE · 2019 — present · augmented-reality installation
An installation on domestic violence: 23 posters that come alive through augmented reality, in the words of survivors. It began as a small written expression of my own experience.
Haven't You Done Enough? · 2015 — 2018 · five stages
A five-part series that takes a stand for women: the fictional life of one woman through five punishments. Each piece carries its own text, in my words, from when I made it.
W.O.E. · 2019 — present · oil and acrylic
An ongoing series in oil and acrylic, begun in 2019 and still being added to. Shown as a solo series in September 2021. Two of these works were shown at SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York, that October (listing on MutualArt).
See Ashram 25, with the performances →
2021 · installation · graduating work, SVA New York · selected for In and Out of Time
It began as frustration at how few eastern artists I came across, and how many of the successful ones seemed to shed their culture. A project meant to represent every Asian country ended up being about just one: me.
Rice paste, red ochre mud, sugarcane, red thread and my own work, each a symbol. A harvest of myself, from planted student to ripe professional.
Confess to the Universe · 2018 — now · installation, 5 × 2 ft
Confess to the Universe. Since 2018, about 2,750 anonymous confessions have arrived from around the world: things people wanted off their chest, secrets, rants, things they had to say out loud. Set in type and hung together as one wall, they ask how we behave when no one knows it's us.
2021 · installation
"Both being windows of isolation that peak outside where the world seems to be unraveling, I mix my culture with the times we live in."
In the piece Windows of Isolation - (Past) Picchla Jharokha and Zoom Today, I showcase the similarities between a Jharokha and a Zoom. Both being windows of isolation that peak outside where the world seems to be unraveling, I mix my culture with the times we live in. Jharokha's use by the royals to avoid crowds and by the women who were forced to view parties in the palace from here is exactly why we use Zoom in the pandemic. Though the one difference that haunts me is how the women who were forced to use the Jharokha never complained, not that they were expected to, but everyone forced to use Zoom do, like everyone expected. Picchla Jharokha also encloses a short diary entry on its interior wall with introspective feelings expressed on its small windows. Similarly, Zoom Today has an interior that displays a screen recording of an anxious overthinker spending their free time during isolation in the pandemic. With Picchla Jharokha and Zoom Today side by side, I invite people to take a peek inside and outside themselves. Walk into my personal diary while reading my monologue and get flooded with the shadows of my feelings. Then walk over to Zoom Today to see a recap of 2020
Plexiglass and acrylic on canvas paper; pen on digital print · 36 × 64 in each · with video, 10 min 26 s · SVA Spring Open Studios, 2021
2021 · digital
Handwritten lines on fields of flat colour: one of the in-between flashes.
Mediums
Painting · installation · sculpture · printmaking — etching, woodblock, linocut, aquatint, drypoint · ceramics · wood · textile & weaving · hand-tufted carpet · performance · video · digital & AR · animation · photography · prose · poetry · shayari · music · dance
