Archana Chaudhary MFA Fine Art
My work explores the subjective female space and questions of identity, gender, race and class. In my art, I am especially interested in thinking about the relationship between form and psychology and how the human form is both vulnerable and resistant. I am also interested in the human condition and what ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ means in terms of questions of identity. These are qualities and concepts I try to both discover and express through the process of making my paintings and drawings. I want to discover new ways of thinking about portraiture as a form and how it can make us think about the psychology of the human subject.
Over the years, the art I have made has centred on drawings and large scale paintings, largely on canvas. They have explored figurative representations of women in modern Indian society and are based on my studies and observations. My starting point has been to capture what I see about my subject in the place where I live and my ambition is for the world to see that too. I am inspired by how women in my mother country have moved past a ‘passiveness’ and how confidence has taken its roots. I try to document these changing times that we are living in through expressionistic forms.
