Artist Statement

Through The Looking Glass And Other Stories
Migrating from my native land India to different geographical regions has made me acutely aware of issues of boundary, identity, caste-color-gender, perception and hierarchy. Navigating through three regions of the globe I have seen how changes in population demographics create subtle shifts in perceptions of who regard themselves as the nation and who is regarded as marginal. While my work traverses these wide panoramas of experiences, displacement and loss remain at the core of my work unifying it in recent years.

Since 2004 a major aspect of my work examines the trauma of migration that makes one a minority, different, and faced with uncertainty in an unfamiliar landscape. Alice's journey in Wonderland, her encounters with the strange absurd landscape, which parallels the experience of the 'other', has proven to be a powerful metaphor in portraying those issues in the series 'Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories'. Those experiences are referenced in this series by the following: juxtapositions of the immediate surroundings with those of the past, through the use of appropriation of the original illustration of the 'white rabbit' from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a personalized drawing of Alice, maps, my thumb print, excerpts from the Patriot Act, self-portraits, decorative motifs from India, and other motifs from my landscape. I have been constructing these realities in my work by combining drawing with printmaking, and various means of image-making such as repetition, sewing, tearing, adding, cutting or overlapping.

Bio

Indrani was born in Kolkata, India. She moved from India to Barbados with her husband David Gall in 1981, where she resided for 23 years. She received a BFA and a MFA degree in printmaking from VBU, India, and an advance graduate certificate in contemporary non-toxic printmaking from RIT, NY. After migrating to Barbados she launched her professional career in Art and teaching, exhibiting nationally and internationally representing Barbados on numerous occasions. Indrani joined Barbados Community College in 1999 as a coordinator of the BFA printmaking program and working until 2006 after which she migrated to United States to join her family.

As an artist with a passion for education, she became a part-time faculty at the School of Art of Western Michigan University and taught printmaking and foundation courses from 2007-2009. This opportunity led her to continue research and publish, convert the intaglio lab into a green lab with latest technology, participate in the green panel at Southern Graphics Conference, give demonstrations at the conference and conduct workshops for professional artists and teachers. Although her primary field is printmaking she often incorporates other media and creates construction, installations or interactive pieces to express her ideas.

In 2009 her work was shown in 'The Black Diaspora, 2009 Exhibition Symposium Event' Barbados, curator David Bailey; traveling exhibition, 'Erasing Borders: Sixth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of The Diaspora', curator Vijay Kumar; Chicago Printmakers Collaborative and Cora Stafford Gallery, University of North Texas. Indrani has recently moved to Charlotte, NC with her family. In 2010, she will be an artist-in-resident in the printmaking area of University of North Carolina at Charlotte this spring and an Affiliated Artist in summer at McColl Center for Visual Art.

Her work is included in the collection of ECA, Kolkata, India; Barbados National collection, Barbados Central Bank, Barbados; Southern Graphics Council, F.W. Mestre Collection of Caribbean Art, Miami; and in private collections in Barbados, India, London, France, Germany and USA.