Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 90.5 x 231 cm, 2020

Beyond Two Rivers is a triptych inspired by my work with the female artisans in Peru. This triptych is one of the last paintings I made in Peru. Beyond Two Rivers is also a socially-engaged art project focused on empowering female artisans in a small village in northern Peru to use their voice and creative vision.

Mama, Are You Proud?

Painting

Multi-media

ART-IN-PLACE is organized by CNL Projects and Terrain Exhibitions

The national lockdown in Peru in response to COVID-19 came the day before my solo exhibition and natural pigments art residency was supposed to start in the Peruvian jungle. It had taken months of planning with a local community and my own individual preparation including visiting a patachitra and natural pigments artist in a small village three hours west of Kolkata, India. Needless to say, I’m very fortunate that my life and health hasn’t been challenged in serious ways by the global pandemic. After fifty days of shelter-in-place where I live in Piura, Peru - where internet is sold by the MB, most people’s salaries rely on peddling on the streets, and contemporary, abstract art is still questioned rather than respected - I put up these two paintings, my most pivotal paintings in my series Red, White & Blue, to grieve the exhibition that I thought no one would see.

Gracias por la Mariposa, mixed media on unstretched canvas, 121.9 x 111.8 cm, 2020

The practice of remembering is an abstract art itself, and Gracias Por la Mariposa is a vessel of memories, symbolized by layers of paint pushing towards the surface and wanting to be remembered. Honest interactions with the canvas lead the process while memories culminate and layer on top of one another until a hole delivers wholeness. Memories of the painting process are captured in a 17-second stop-motion animation.

What happens when you remember, mixed media on unstretched canvas, 121.9 x 116.8 cm, 2019

What Happens When You Remember is less concerned with depictions of landscapes or people than with the essence of experience and emotion - the kindness of a stranger and the loneliness of an unfamiliar place. The painting does not represent but recalls the strong equatorial sun, its red-hot heat, and tan bodies on the beaches of Mancora and Cabo Blanco, while intertwining memories of my life before Peru.

Mixed media on unstretched canvas, 76.2 x 91.4 cm, 2019