Artist Statement

Each living thing contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction and transformation into the other. This belief is fundamental to Indian cosmology and, as an artist from India, this has been a important influence on my work. The tension in my work arises from the co-existence of opposing forces that both drive and resist transformation. The changes brought about by metamorphosis and evolution create a desire for a magical world in which the subjective and the objective are indistinguishable. Notions of transformation and more specifically transmogrification form the leitmotif of my work.

I explore these notions by creating fantastic and enchanted worlds that inhabit the space between realities. My work is informed by memory and myths recast in a contemporary context.

"In the subconscious mind there are no distinctions between myth and magic.

For the child or for primitive man, no distinctions exist between the actual and the fantastic. So if you can believe in the actual elephant, there is no reason why you cannot believe in a creature that is half human and half elephant."

The tension created by this co-existence of transformative forces provides the basis for balancing my ceramic practice and conceptual narratives explored though cross-disciplinary instillation. Clay has a number of characteristics or aspects that make it particularly appropriate as a medium for my work. Like myth, clay is primordial in nature. It is a supremely physical and tactile medium, yet with a magical, transformative quality that becomes manifest during the process of manipulating and firing clay. It lends an inner truth to the shapes and forms that are in the throes of metamorphosis. And it can offer an uncanny insight into the work which interests me conceptually. In that sense my work is fundamentally medium specific.

It is important to me that my work be as aesthetically eloquent as it is conceptually meaningful.

Aesthetically I am investigating the heterogeneous aspect of beauty and the grotesque. My installation Untitled 2005, incorporating mixed media elements of clay, wire and water, is a primordial yet dystopian work. The act of incubating-ideas, embryos or entire worlds-suggests a decaying existence headed towards a radical transformation, where the seeds of the future have been sown. In my installation Vanitas, the reflection of wrapped decomposing fruits hung over ceramic bowls filled with what may be the blood or essence of the fruits explores the nostalgia of something diminishing. And in my installation His Master's Voice, themes of metamorphosis and marginalization inherent in the consequences of religious fundamentalism are implied through life-sized hybrid ceramic figures focused towards a deified center.

My most recent works, Abol Tabol and Supper with a Vulture, build on childhood memories. Supper with a Vulture is an animated fable that playfully explores entropy and altered perception while concealing a dark centre. With childlike innocence, a girl and a vulture sit at a table, lovingly eating a meal together. Soon they begin to devour each other. "Abol Tabol is a multimedia installation inspired by the nonsense rhyme of Kolkata's beloved poet Sukumar Ray. In the poem Khichuri Sukumar Ray claims he defies the grammarian to create his world of beasts, birds, insects and amphibians combining with each other to create such non-actual beings. The world of grammar is the reverse of this magical world: it is unambiguous, tautological, well-ordered and perhaps necessary." The installation reinvents the poet's half-human, half-animal creatures and combines them with a medley of Kolkata street sounds in a gently satirical commentary on social mores.

I am currently working on a ceramic carpet titled Aswattha or the inverted tree. The Inverted Tree in the Bhagvad Gita, one of Hinduism's sacred books, is a cosmic tree with its roots in the sky and its branches below. For this work I have combined two of the oldest and richest traditional arts of the "orient", the carpets of Persia and porcelain of China which were traded along the Silk Route that connected the three great Asian kingdoms of Persia, India and China. Today the balance of power-economic, political and military-is shifting back to these very countries. This work, reflecting this seismic shift, brings together these two mediums and makes them both dysfunctional and subversive. In this it reflects the central theme of much of my work, which is based on interwoven cultures, the ease or unease of the transplant, and the fertile ground that makes for the birth of hitherto unusual and fantastic life forms.

Education

2004 - 2007 Hunter College, New York M.F.A. (Sculpture)
2003 - 2004 Excelsior College, New York B.A. (Liberal Arts)
1989 - 1991 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Ceramics sculpture andpapermaking
1987 - 1989 Calcutta University, Calcutta, India Commerce

Apprenticeships & Residencies

2009 European Ceramic Work Centre, Hertogenbosch, NL
2008 - 2009 Hunter College, New York, NY
2007 - 2008 Abrons Art Center, Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY
2007 The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
2001 Ray Meeker, Pondicherry and Kodai Kanal, India Ceramics
2000 "Art in Life", workshop by CIMA Art Gallery, Kolkata, India
1999 Michel Hutin, Auroville, India Ceramics

Publication

2009 Working With Clay (3rd edition), Susan Peterson and Jan Peterson

Awards

2007 Medal of the Faenza Rotary Club, MIC Faenza
2006 Zankel Gift Award, Hunter College

Exhibitions