Summer Residency 2024: Ahalya Rajendran | Shailee Mehta

My work stems from an autobiographical lens on the female embodiment of agency. I draw most of my imagery from the everyday, often followed by a mythologising of the self. The settings and characters in my narratives are evocative of the Indian landscape, but are also pushed into the terrains of a beyond-human/ non-human environment. Using a theatrical visual language, they subvert patriarchal tropes by enacting an otherness associated with the female experience. My inquiry into figurative painting allows me to embrace intimate ideas such as that of desire, solitude, idleness and care while acknowledging the body’s vulnerability as well as its power.

In my recent paintings, there has been a conscious and a gradual shift towards abstraction, where the figures are more embedded in the contexts that they occupy, seemingly appearing from and disappearing into each other and their surroundings. My engagement with drawing has largely informed this shift. I find the directness of the medium to be extremely intuitive and even primal to a certain extent. Moreover, I enjoy the way that the line unifies all- bodies, trees, grounds, horizons- into a quiet metamorphosis that is in constant flux.