#LeMillRecommends: Indian Artists to Watch Out For By Noelle Kadar

Artistic Director of the Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace in Jaipur – India's first contemporary public sculpture park, Noelle Kadar brings driving dynamism to the Indian art space.

With the help of her keen and extraordinary eye, we put together a list of some Indian artists out there, redefining art with their unmatched ethos.

 

Bhasha Chakrabarti

Ma and me by Bhasha Chakrabarti 

Currently pursuing her MFA in painting and print making at the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Bhasha’s art explores the generation of meaning – one that goes far and beyond anything ordinary and sparks a conversation on global issues of race, gender and power.

She emphasizes her engagement with her artwork as a “process of mending”. Unlike the conventional use of the word in the context of material objects and perhaps relationships, this process of repair and regeneration is more than a monotonous, utilitarian act, but one that collars vulnerability and fragility. Induced by this literal form of mending, emerges her unexampled artwork, rethinking societal norms and embracing a magnificent metamorphosis to the future while retaining the past.

 

Ayesha Singh

Hybrid Drawings by Ayesha Singh

Born in New Delhi, Ayesha Singh was recently awarded the Emerging Artist of the Year award from India Today in 2020. Her work confronts conscious and subconscious political agendas and social hierarchies. Unconfined by a specific medium, her artwork emphasizes movement and forced displacement and analyses the pliable public and private spaces.

The viewers walk through sculptural drawings that encompass multicultural structures, and inherently birth spaces for conversations on stability.

 

Ubik

Texts, 2019, Vinyl by Ubik

Engaged in a practice that assimilates images, videos, text and sculpture, Ubik lives and works out of New Delhi.

Going back and forth with the art making process and cross-examining objects and their environments, Ubik’s art discerns the possibilities of constructing crucial as well as humorous stories keeping with the tone of contemporary aesthetics. UBIK’s exhibitions include Der Sand aus den Uhren, Franz Josefs Kai 3, Vienna, Austria, 2016, Thanks for Writing, 601 Artspace, New York, USA, 2014, and Please rewind! Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid, Spain, 2014 amongst many others.

 

Sudipta Das

Baroda based visual artist Sudipta Das uses mixed media to bring to focus the realities of climate change, human migration and intimate socio-political issues with the unconventional use of Hanji paper.

Through her paper sculptures, she depicts the ongoing turbulence at her hometown in Assam, along with the unsteady pasts and uncertain futures of the victims.

 

Rithika Merchant

Infinite Portals by Rithika Merchant

Sundering her time between Mumbai and Barcelona, Rithika Merchant has extensively exhibited her work across the globe in countries such as India, Spain, Germany, France and the United States. Delving into the expedition of myths across regions, she creates mosaics of myths received in the form of questions across centuries and across different cultures.

Different pieces of her art are like totems that can be woven together into a narrative by the beholder of the art. Her most recent solo show includes Mirror of the Mind at Galerie L.J, Paris and took place in 2019.

 

Tanya Goel

Mechanisms 7 by Tanya Goel

With a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Yale University in 2010, Tanya Goel’s work is deeply invested in the process of creation. She makes her own pigments from varied material such as charcoal and soil, and adds more to her art with the use of different textures and how they individually reflect light. Her art focuses on density and complexity, and mathematical formulas established then destroyed.

Encircling the affairs of order and chaos, her art can also be read as linguistic systems, since meaning derived only though laborious repetition and patterns.

In an attempt to study the depth of art and its many embodiments, we shifted our gaze to these Indian artists devising unconventional dexterity. With an ever evolving world, an ever evolving art space is only inevitable and the appreciation, unfathomable.