“My practice explores the performative intersection between sculpture and installation and is informed by my consistent engagement with the sensuous materiality of clay. My focus predicates the possibilities and challenges of meditative multiples and immersive installations, through which I contemplate the ever-changing concepts of space and place.” – Madhvi Subrahmanian
Artist, writer and curator Madhvi Subrahmanian is renowned for...
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“My practice explores the performative intersection between sculpture and installation and is informed by my consistent engagement with the sensuous materiality of clay. My focus predicates the possibilities and challenges of meditative multiples and immersive installations, through which I contemplate the ever-changing concepts of space and place.” – Madhvi Subrahmanian
Artist, writer and curator Madhvi Subrahmanian is renowned for her distinctive use of ceramics and clay as an artistic medium. Born in 1962, Subrahmanian studied pottery at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, under renowned ceramicist Ray Meeker, before pursuing a postgraduate degree in Fine Art from the Meadows School of Arts in Dallas, Texas.
Subrahmanian’s work is rooted in her own personal history. Her migratory life, particularly the challenges and opportunities of constant relocation, is frequently referenced in her work. She uses personal memory, along with collective experiences, to create sculptures and installations that are effectively captivating and immersive.
As articulated by art critic Nancy Adajania in the 2017 exhibition catalogue of the artist’s show: “In her evolving practice, Madhvi has endeavoured to disturb formalist abstraction (of an object maker). She has experimented with a range of processes, both formal and informal, and allowed the factor of chance to gamble against set protocols; she is a partisan of low firing, hand-building, smoke marks, cracks, holes, cavities and surface impurities. She favours mandala-shaped assemblages, those fail-safe guarantees of holistic selfhood, but is also keen on spirals that spin away from the centre and find their own trajectories. She does not differentiate between clay and skin. She kneads and ‘grows’ seeds, pods, cones, trees; she once made a mould of her pregnant belly… Madhvi is a comrade and co-conspirator of clay; time and gravity are her adversaries. She records the shadows of arrow-shaped roads; time wipes them out. She challenges gravity; she builds high, higher, not out of hubris, but because she knows that ‘if you push clay against its will, it pushes right back’...” (Mapping Memory, Mumbai: Chemould Prescott Road, 2017, online)
The artist is also a founding member and curator of the Indian Ceramics Triennale. She lives and works between Mumbai and Singapore.
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Born
1962
Mumbai, Maharashtra
Education
1993 Master of Fine Arts, Meadows School of Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2020 walk and chew gum, Thomas...
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2020 walk and chew gum, Thomas Hunter Project Space, New York, USA
2017 Mapping Memory, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai
2017 Ode to the unknown, India Heritage Centre, Singapore
2012 Japan Creative Centre, Embassy of Japan, Singapore
2011 Connections, Indigo Blue Art Gallery, Singapore
2010 Organic/Abstract, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai
2010 Lacoste Gallery, Concorde, Massachusetts, USA
2006 Pods and seeds, Anne Reid Gallery, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
2003 Ceramics 2003, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai
2000 New works, Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai
1995 Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas, USA
1993 Meadows Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas, USA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Ceramic Sculptures, 079 Stories, Ahmedabad
2019 Elements in Mythology, Gallery Ark, Vadodara
2018 Printing, Drawing Ceramics, Art Motif Gallery, New Delhi
2018 Modus Operandi, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai
2018 Indian Ceramic Triennale, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur
2018 New Orientatlia, Yingge Ceramic Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
2017 From Ocean to the Silver City, Australian High Commision, Singapore
2017 Here be Dragons and other Coded Landscapes, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2016 Tree of Life, Ayala Museum, Manila, Philippines
2016 Ceramic View, National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
2015 Six by Six, Australia Ceramic Triennale, Canberra, Australia
2015 Indo-Korean Collaboration, InKo Centre, Chennai, India
2014 Jakarta Contemporary Ceramics Biennale, Jakarta, Indonesia
2014 India Art Fair, presented by Chemould Prescott Road, New Delhi
2013 ASNA Ceramic Triennale, Karachi, Pakistan
2013 Indian Contemporary Ceramics, FuLe International Museum, Fuping, China
2013 Traditions Evolving, NCECA, Houston, USA
2011 Chairs, Apparao Gallery, Bangalore
2010 Shape/Space, Ngee Ann Foundation, Singapore
2009 French and Singapore: New Generation Artists, Alliance Francaise de Singapour, Singapore
2008 Woman on Woman, Fost Art Gallery, Singapore
2007 Feats of Clay, Lincoln Arts Center, California, USA
2006 In Diaspora: NJ and Indo-Pak Heritage, Montgomery Arts Council, New Jersey, USA
2006 Contemporary Indo-American Art, Indian Consulate, New York, USA
2005 Distillations, Arts Council of Princeton, New Jersey, USA
2004 Ideas and Images, NGMA, Mumbai
2000 Taiwan Golden Ceramic Awards Show, Taiwan, Mumbai
2000 Potters Tea Party, NGMA, Mumbai
1996 Schweissen, S E Gallery, Darmstadt, Germany
1994 Paper, Scissor, Rock, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, Texas, USA
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