First of all, tell us a bit of your background and studies. What kind of education or training helped you develop your approach to art?

When I was young, art was a means to hasten the slow paced environment around me. It wasn’t until I visited a few exhibitions that I had the urge to create. I was very privileged to be surrounded by people who encouraged me to pursue my interest in art at an early age.

I completed my studies from College of Art, Delhi. My main focus was painting but being exposed to all the other media unknown to me at the time had a lasting effect on the way I would work from that moment. It taught me so much about self-reliance, consistency and the importance of surrounding yourself with what you covet.

Due to a really serious back injury that happened two years in, I was never able to stand or sit still for more than a few minutes. I still can’t. So you’d always find me either lying on the floor trying to draw and paint or doing yoga in between classes right there in the studio. Eventually I just started unrolling large canvases on the floor and painting without stretching them. I did quite a lot of my life studies this way, which of course, infuriated everyone.

I discovered the amount of force and pressure I could apply with a brush and other tools this way was much more conducive to the way I work, and allowed a more intense approach.

 

You are a versatile multidisciplinary artist, but what is your preferred medium of choice, the one you will always come back to? 

Acrylic. All my thinking happens there. I could be stuck for days on a painting or an installation with no answers in sight, constantly getting more restless and anxious till I’m about to boil over. Before that happens I HAVE to go back to the canvas. Acrylic is such a versatile medium. It lets you play with it as vigorously as you want in a single moment but once it settles, it is completely unforgiving in nature. I admire that stubbornness.

It offers the most freedom with precise control but forces you to be resolute and intentional in your boldness. The process itself is deeply valuable and rewarding.

 

Where does the inspiration come from?

Questions, and personal experiences. Questions I ask myself and questions that are sometimes asked of me.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the mystery and dialog you can have with a medium such as printmaking. There is a lot of intricate planning and work that goes into it and within a few seconds, when you finally lift the paper off the plate, it emerges complete and ready for more. It’s a very intuitive process, and a lot of my future ideas take concrete form during experimenting and research. It’s taken me a while to see that doing and failing is far more important than planning and succeeding.

 

How do you feel about being involved in an online residency program? How important is it to stay connected with the international art community?

I am excited about it. Sharing your process and exchanging ideas that lead to new directions and discourse is an interesting way to expand your practice, develop and discuss new chains of thought and add dimensions and layers to work that were previously unexplored.  Allowing time to reflect and navigate ideas collaboratively while sharing in the creative process of others tends to enable learning, inspire and enrich your soul.

With so much propaganda and media manipulation, a lot of our unbiased knowledge is based on the effects of incidents we observe around us. We are limited by geography and the extent of realism reduces the farther we are from the source, almost like a game of chinese whispers. Being connected gives you a chance to witness the ideologies, voices and insight of others whose experiences are different and unique. It’s vital to stay connected, to keep interacting with those who have spent their lives observing, understanding and responding to the implications of their environments.

 

What are your thoughts about the theme ‘Conflict Art Peace’?

When I think of conflict, I think of confrontation; of choices and difficult conversations. Rather than the external, which has a more visceral and dominating presence, what interests me are the internal mechanisms of conflict. The bruises that heal; and their breadcrumbs that last forever, which begs the question- how can we pacify ourselves?

Humanity dignifies, restores and re-imagines itself through creating, performing, preserving and revising its cultural and artistic life. Existing as a language on its own, it’s a door to communicate beyond words, and cultivate empathy.

Small gestures, apologies, and reconciliatory gift giving have always been an avenue of exchanging art and bridging the effects of conflict. A truer understanding of the recipient dictates the path of conflict – a shattering, or a lingering subliminal affair. 

 

How can art transform conflict? Does it generate new inspiration and a way of healing?

Two instances come to mind. I was speaking to another artist a few years ago and he asked me “How are you going to take over the world with your own personal brand of love? How are you going to touch people’s lives in a way that gets noticed? And during the residency a statement came up, “we as artists cannot change the world” which I have been thinking about quite a lot together.

 

Tell us a bit more about your project ideas…

My project is proposing an immersive wall of static to exist in. In exploring the necessity of a protector – a trooper, who rises in the presence of conflict after experiencing some of their own, to guard and protect those who need it , I became interested in the environments and and spaces they would travel to: the abandoned planes of existence that would serve as places of stasis to rest and imbue with care. There is a need for love in abandoned places that have become marred with the coldness and harsh realities of time and isolation, and I want in.

Entering these spaces, making your presence known and existing – if only as a physical entity, is the first step to being accepted : accepted by nature, by the cold and cracked concrete; even the grass that waits for you to lift yourself off it so it may rise once again.

I’ve been exploring these ideas in a variety of media: collage, painting, video and generative art – prioritizing the process over the end product. During the residency I wanted to focus on the tactile effect of entering a new space – the signals that it sends around itself to declare your presence, particularly the surface you put your weight on.

I have always been fascinated by the purity of a line. And as a space beneath your feet that suffers and heals in silence, the blades of grass have a movement I have recently been obsessed with. Experiencing it, depicting it, recreating it….. becoming it.

I’m interested to show the presence of anxiety and lack thereof in a blade of grass as it is greeted with a strange presence upon it after years of loneliness. Does it shiver?

What symphonies does it play to declare your arrival, or more accurately, invasion upon it?

 

What do you want to achieve in the near future? Any plans/projects?

At the moment I’m working on a small part of this project in code and on paper, exploring only the environment and tremors, I’d look to extend the work in performance and street collages – an increase in scale and expanse that would enable a more immersive and connected experience.