Artist Statement
I was born and raised in Pennsylvania in an Indian-American family. I grew up navigating the complex relationships that were formed through the combination of contrasting cultures and religions. My work is a reflection on this unique American experience and confronts the hybrid nature of identity through the layering of image and processes while addressing our desire to share experience. These ideas are investigated through processes that allude to the notion of creation and destruction as it relates to materiality, the self, and nature.
I activate memories and contemplate autobiographical events and family history through (the process of) making. The paintings I make contain interactions of color, pattern, textures, and symbols inspired by designs used in Indian and African textiles, Indian palaces and garden design, and Pennsylvania Dutch craft, which manifest ideas ranging from postcolonial histories, personal narrative, ornamentation, and the mystical languages of abstract Tantra painting. A range of materials are used throughout the works: pigments and dyes are sprinkled and absorbed into the grounds, granulated glass particles are dragged across the surfaces, drawing lines are made with embroidery thread that hugs the curves of the forms that emerge, silver leaf is applied onto raised areas of paint. My desires to shield and protect, to nourish and feed give life to an embryonic system of works that move between painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Through installation I aim to create worlds of tactile immediacy that dismantle hierarchy for the viewer in the hope of forming new connections from one piece to the next. Through this series of combinations and interchanging visualizations, I search for moments of convergence as I negotiate and reconcile what it means to be hybrid.
