The 2022 artist residency brings forth new dimensions to the project. This year, Indian artists have joined the residency program for the first time. They will collaborate and exchange virtually and create within their respective studio spaces. Also, the residency will support the artists through a basic production grant . Post-residency, the art exchange will culminate into an artist residency book. A.M.M.A.A. has also partnered with the Woman Up ! for a podcast with the participating artists in 2023 and both Aparajita and Alka are also looking forward to it.
MEET THE ARTISTS
Alka Mathur is a visual artist who works with mixed media. She is an alumna of the Sir J.J School of Art, Mumbai, India. Her artistic practice entails mental reconstructions articulated as assemblages on fabric, paper and cloth. Using natural dyes, earth pigments and found objects, Alka strives to blur the line between traditional and contemporary.
Nature plays a significant role in the artist’s work. The contours and cracks of the parched land of her home Rajasthan, have always found their way into her relationship with material - the rustic, frayed edges which are worked over but never refined. She photographs nature and then interrupts their easy or direct readings by abstracting them into compositions of lines, planes, textures and symbols. Earth, matter and the divine feminine energy are themes which inspire and permeate her practice. The kantha or running stitch is an integral motif, representing the meditative, repetitive process analogous to the everyday rituals of women reworking old pieces of cloth.
Her more recent assemblages use tea bags and tea stains on handmade paper, on which she writes a daily journal. These works are both anecdotal and autobiographical - incorporating ordinary, everyday happenings where the artist presents herself in fragments, while also encouraging the viewer to become a participant.
She has held solo and group shows in India and abroad, including Bangladesh, UK and The US. Some prominent shows include solo exhibitions at The Bikaner House, Delhi (2016); Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Center (2012); Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland (2013); Nehru Center, London (2011). Alka was an artist in residence at The Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, US (2006) and Cleveland, US (2013). Her works are in several public and private collections in India and abroad.
Follow the artist-
https://www.instagram.com/alka_mathur_art/
Aparajita Jain Mahajan is an abstract mixed-media artist. Through her painting, drawing, and sewing, she investigates interactions between seen and unseen forms and energies, while creating emotive topographies. The feelings of passage of time, pausing to reflect, following footprints, discovering pathways, and occupying a location are visually explored through her works. Her work rises out of flat surfaces and journeys through three-dimensional space.
While studying at Rishi Valley School in India, she discovered her deep connection with painting and nature. In 2003, she completed her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Film, Animation & Video. She further strengthened her visual language at the Art Students League in New York in 2007 and online at Thrive Together Network in 2022.
Aparajita has focused on her art practice while simultaneously undertaking social projects. She created animations for the Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum in New Delhi and assisted film maker Saeed Mirza in his tribute to Gandhiji in 2004. While Living in Auroville, a universal township, she taught art in an outreach village school and made a documentary about this special school.
Since 2009, Aparajita has exhibited her artwork at solo, two-person, and group shows. ‘The Line in Between’ at the Alliance Francaise, 2012 and ‘Interactions’ at the habitat centre, 2016 in New Delhi, India were some of these exhibitions. In 2020, she debuted her textile artwork as an installation ‘Tracing Memories’ in the RISD alumni show at the India Art Fair.
Earlier this year as part of the “Taking.Up.Space” initiative by the Thrive Together Network, Aparajita, co-created a virtual exhibition "Attachment; Abbreviated” featuring materials that were shared, swapped, and changed between artists in opposite ends of the world.
Aparajita works as an independent artist based in Pune, India.
Follow the artist-
https://aparajitajainmahajan.com
https://www.instagram.com/aparajita_atot/?hl=en
Mapping Interruptions
-unfolding portals of the everyday
Both of us, Alka and Aparajita were Introduced by Ruchika over a zoom call for the A.M.M.A.A residency. As we started to unravel our stories, life journeys and experiences with each other, we found connections and intersections on multiple levels. At the same time, it was a discovery of another’s world through video calls, zoom and what’s-app messages.
Universal energy, nature, loss and fragility, relationships, home, daughter - mother - child, nurture, memory keeping, looking in, looking out, looking within, and personal rituals have dominated our conversations.
One of us has already built a lifetime of memories as a mother while the other is navigating motherhood through new experiences and understanding the world through her child’s eye.
In our creative journey as artists, who work from home studios, being interrupted in the flow of our activities, is natural. Often these interruptions can be pleasant but other times lead to anxiety. Today we have joyfully learnt to juggle these pauses and to find a physical and mental space to create our art.
Capturing and archiving moments is crucial to my art practice. I, Alka, have been obsessively collecting objects, and memories since childhood. Stored in boxes, shells, seeds, dried flowers, wires, nuts, bolts, washers, scraps of paper, cloth and threads fill up my studio. Constantly clicking pictures, and videos on my phone camera, I keep storing and archiving these into folders on my computer and hard drive; I write or scribble the daily happenings or a shared moment over a cup of tea onto used tea bags and tea-stained paper and create journals with handmade paper.
For me, Aparajita, looking out of the window, looking into the TV screen, my thoughts wander back to the rhythms, sounds and smells, that are folded into my memories, reflecting a life path I walked on. Now, in the interrupted flow of today, the mundane is precious to me. I am saving pieces of paper that were once lists, my child’s doodles, daily notes and a variety of wastepaper from our home. Using these discarded moments, I will create paper pulp. Inherited textile fragments and threads from my late mother’s textile apparel practice overlapping with the remnants of my now, I intend to develop topographies charting my ordinary.
We try to interpret and capture this visually in each of our works by using found objects - materials that we have collected over the years or been passed down. Our works are primarily abstract in nature. Alka lives in Delhi and Aparajita in Pune, India.
We plan to do three works each during the online residency.
We will be in touch through chat windows, video conversations or simply drawing or working side by side on zoom in silence.
Each of us plans to create a 14 page accordion book, on which we will create a daily reflection collage. This can be shared during the residency on the A.M.M.A.A. website and instagram page.
We will document our individual processes through pictures and video.
-Alka Mathur & Aparajita Jain Mahajan
Artist at Work- Aparajita Jain Mahajan
Artist at Work- Alka Mathur
