In Vadehra Art Gallery’s latest exhibition (ME)(MORY), artists show a quasi-dream-like state in their works, shedding their exterior bodies for the visceral and whimsical world of within

Featuring nine artists with subcontinental presences or origins, Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce (ME)(MORY), a women’s group show curated by Dipti Anand 

The exhibition brings together the works of Faiza Butt, Ruby Chishti, Anoli Perera, Bakula Nayak, Apnavi Makanji, Rakhi Peswani, Himali Singh Soin, Biraaj Dodiya, and Shrimanti Saha.

(ME)(MORY) sets a stage for interdisciplinary conversations around the nature of self-building by inviting empathetic and philosophical reflection on constructions of identity or experience. 

In her curatorial essay, Anand writes: “Since the self is as much remembered as it is present, its narrativization requires a sensitive and cross-sectional articulation of the self as ‘no longer’ and ‘not yet’ from where the ‘is’ emerges. In (ME)(MORY), the artists approach the construction of these artworks as they might the construction of themselves, from a quasi-dream-like state, or an ecstasis, or states of overpowering emotion, seemingly shedding their exterior bodies for the visceral and whimsical world of within.”

The show presents a significant body of work from each artist, with a notable diversity across media and materials, visual languages, techniques and creative intentions. 

Where Himali Singh Soin’s sensory and algorithmic assessment of the semi-colons used in Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves is an immersive project exploring our relationships with continuity and macrocosms, Ruby Chishti’s representational sculptures are refurbished personal memories borne of contextual circumstances then extrapolated to larger, shared experiences.

Rakhi Peswani’s fabric panels are an exposition of the inner theatre of creativity and the tediousness of channelling self-expression into skill, which offers a temporal counterpoint to Bakula Nayak and Apnavi Makanji, whose post-inspiration drawings are a figural self-study of the inter-dependent emotional–physical body and erasure of inflated values in anthropocentric human forms respectively.

Meanwhile, Biraaj Dodiya’s series of oil paintings are abstracted landscapes that mirror an unknown world navigated by intuition rather than vision, a sensibility Faiza Butt shares in intermingling narratives across intense global cultures with autobiographical elements in her ceramic and porcelain sculptures. 

While the show is on view at the gallery they are also embracing a new immersive 3D digital technology experience via Matterport on their website, which offers a multi-dimensional mapping of the show.

The exhibition can be viewed at Vadehra Art Gallery from 22 January to 27 February