A Soliloquist’s Journal: a solo exhibition by Rinku Choudhary

A Soliloquist’s Journal, a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Rinku Choudhary, will be presented by Art Incept at Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi, from September 4 to 9. Curated by Prima Kurien, the exhibition brings together paintings exploring memory, domesticity, identity and the quiet emotional rhythms of everyday life.

Choudhary’s work draws from her experiences of growing up in a large joint family, where restrictions placed on her movements because of her gender became an early point of observation. The home and its inhabitants gradually became subjects through which she began examining relationships, emotional restraint and the unseen dynamics of domestic life.

Working primarily on canvas and paper, Choudhary creates layered compositions through mediums that build, obscure and disrupt surfaces. Her paintings focus less on depicting domestic interiors and more on evoking the psychological spaces within them, where routine, silence, memory and emotion intersect.

A key influence on her practice is British psychoanalyst D W Winnicott’s distinction between the “true self” and the “false self”. This idea appears in her spontaneous gestures, overlapping figures and fragmented marks. A recurring image of a woman seated on a chair, along with scattered marks resembling thoughts, suggests an interior world negotiating between expression and restraint.

Her visual language draws from artists including Mary Cassatt, Arpita Singh, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Tyeb Mehta. Memories of birds from the terrace of her childhood home in Delhi-6 and a beloved dog also recur in her paintings as markers of time, belonging and remembrance.

The pandemic deepened Choudhary’s engagement with domestic life, bringing attention to the repetitive routines and emotional labour of women around her. These observations appear in her work as psychological traces rather than literal narratives.

Choudhary, born in New Delhi in 1992, studied painting at the College of Art, New Delhi, where she completed her MFA in 2018. Her work has been shown at exhibitions including the India Art, Architecture & Design Biennale at the Red Fort in 2023 and exhibitions at MOMUS Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. She has also received the Shrishti Art Grant and awards from the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation.

When: September 4–9

Where: Shridharani Gallery, Tansen Marg, New Delhi