Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India],November 25: ‘’Four Walls, One Square Feet, A Piece of Sky…”, an exhibition by Anjana Mehra at the Nine Fish Art Gallery, Mumbai from 2nd December 2024 to 4th January 2025is a mixed media visual exploration of the transactional unit of real estate space in which entire generations of urban dwellers live out their lives, dreams and dashed hopes.
In this series, square footage is the measure used for a commodity space called ‘home’. The artist is critiquing and looking rhythmically at our environment, at our new age which is driven by the dogmas of growth and development. She has used found images from daily newspapers, magazines and scenes from her current environment in these paintings.
Her observation is that something is not rotten in the state but in the viscera of civil society and in our own systems. She questions the notion of progress with the stubborn opposition and stance of a protester.
The re-imagining of the boxed structure, vitreous facade, gleaming metal, vacant building, empty warehouse, aging land and wave-less sea is tinged with the regret and loss of a living space – a zone where a smoking chimney meant industrial activity and high technological spirit rather than economic re-haul, refurbishment, expansion and anarchic development.
- Opening / Preview Date: 1st December 2024, 6.30 pm onwards
- Exhibition Dates: 2nd December 2024 to 4th January 2025
- Time: 10:30 am to 7:30 pm
Address: Nine Fish Art Gallery
The New Great Eastern Mills, Salsette- 27, 25-29 Dr. Ambedkar Road, Inside Salsette 27 Compound, Near Rani Baug, Byculla East, Mumbai 400027. - Website: https://www.ninefish.in/
About
Nine Fish Art Gallery Located within the charming precincts of a historic textile mill in Central Mumbai, Nine Fish seeks to explore connections between multiple art-related endeavors. Envisioned as part of the offering will be shows that cover a gamut of genres: painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, photography, video, documentary practice, performance and new media. Nine Fish aims to lend its space in support of tribal art and craft practices, while bringing within its ambit research / documentation projects in the field of architecture and design.
Bio Of Artist – Anjana Mehra
“It’s the solitude of art-making that I gravitated towards; the freedom to express myself as I attempt to decipher the world I was born into.”
Anjana Mehra is a Mumbai-based artist whose explorations in art began as a nine-year-old at boarding school, where she was encouraged to develop co-curricular interests. Art became a mode of expression, and eventually, her destiny.
After graduating from J.J. School of Art in 1971, she moved to M.S. University in Baroda to specialize in printmaking at a time when printing presses were rarefied contraptions. On returning to then-Bombay, she became one of the first artists to conduct workshops in printmaking at her studio, creating accessibility in a relatively new field. Her own prints drew audiences from local metros and international hubs like New York and Los Angeles.
However, the rigorous, premeditative process of etching prints gradually led to her yearning for a more spontaneous medium. A period of working with graphite and coloured powders followed, where Mehra reversed the process of drawing by covering the paper with powder and erasing it in precise movements with a sharpened eraser. She also worked in oils and mixed media.
Her body of work remains within the parameters of the two-dimensional, with forays into video film and sound installation, while her color palette evolved from dark tones with underlayers of light, to overt vibrance. The themes infusing Mehra’s artwork are extracted from her immediate environment, resulting in cathartic expressions of internalized experiences.
For instance, her last exhibition, The Nail House (2020), surveyed the demolishment of her home as she continued to live on the premises. The collection consisted of digital prints on canvas, interplaying with Mehra’s dramatic interventions in paint, along with a video culled from meticulous recordings. The series depicted the personal loss of shelter in a conversely detached manner, mirroring the dispassionate construction workers whose job it was to destroy her home.
Her current exhibition, “Four Walls, One Square Feet, A Piece of Sky…” opening on 1st December 2024 continues the exploration of our commodified lived space called ‘home’ wherein the artist critiques our new age driven by the dogmas of growth and development.
Mehra has had a score of solo exhibitions, and has participated in forty-five group exhibitions nationally and internationally, in addition to biennales and other events. She has traveled extensively for workshops to countries like Russia, Malaysia, Brazil, Kenya, Cambodia and Israel.
A septuagenarian, she continues to create and commune with her surroundings.
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