Shelly Bahl

AIRPORT SIGNS (MOSAIC PICTOGRAM #2)

Lot No# AB2012

Shelly Bahl
AIRPORT SIGNS (MOSAIC PICTOGRAM #2) Mixed-Media on Photographic Print
Digital Print, AP, A small study for an editioned series
8" X 10"
Signed: On the Back, Lower Right Corners
Work done in 2009

Bio

Shelly Bahl is a visual and media artist born in Benares, India, and currently based in Toronto and New York City.  She received her B.F.A. (Visual Art and Art History) from York University, Toronto and her M.A. (Studio Art) from New York University.  Her interdisciplinary work in drawing, painting, sculpture/ installation, photography and video, has appeared in a number of solo and group exhibitions in North America and internationally over the past 15 years.
 Her recent projects include two-person and group exhibitions at: Aicon Gallery, NY; Religare Arts Initiative, Delhi; Project Gallery, Ann Arbor; Gales Gallery/ York University, Toronto; Dazibao, Montreal; Guild Gallery, NY; Queens Museum of Art, NY; Experimental Art Gallery/ Habitat Centre, Delhi; Jamaica Center For Arts and Learning, NY; Jersey City Museum, NJ; Modern Fuel Gallery, Kingston, ON; and Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh.
Over the past six years, she has presented solo exhibitions at: Bronx River Art Center, NY; LEE Ka-sing Gallery, Toronto; Gallery 198, London, UK; Richmond Art Gallery, Vancouver; Gallery 44, Toronto; Khyber Centre For the Arts, Halifax, NS; and M.Y. Art Prospects, NY.

Bahl has participated in short and long-term artist residencies at: Religare Arts Initiative, Delhi; Artists Alliance, NY; Banff Centre For the Arts; Matucana 100, Santiago; Vermont Studio Center; and Sanskriti Kendra Foundation, Delhi.

Her artwork has received significant critical attention, and has most recently been reviewed in the New York Times, Time Out Delhi, NOW Magazine, National Post, Hamilton Spectator, Asian Art News, World Sculpture News, Art India, Vancouver Sun, ART AsiaPacific, New Art Examiner, and FUSE Magazine
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Bahl is a founding artist member of SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and ZEN-MIX 2000: Pan-Asian Visual Arts Network in Toronto.  She has also received a number of visual art production grants and fellowships, for independent projects and artistic collaborations.

She has also worked with a number of arts organizations as an Educator, Curator and Arts Programmer.  She has taught studio art courses at Alfred University, The Pratt Institute, Vermont College and the Ontario College of Art and Design.  From 2005-08 she was a Lecturer in the Visual and Performing Arts Program at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.  Her artwork can be viewed at: www.shellybahl.com.

Artist Statement

Within my art practice I was initially investigating the history and exotification of Indian art and culture, and my interdisciplinary works questioned the practices of Orientalism, kitsch appropriation, and the mass-production and consumption of culturally-specific iconography.

My recent projects explore the strange and surreal aspects of cultural hybridity.  I am interested in how distinct cultural experiences have shaped us all, and I am also researching the points where these distinctions overlap, and where unique, hybrid and odd cultural forms emerge.  The narratives in my mixed-media projects address issues of cultural dislocation and the cultural schizophrenia that can occur in the translation/ transmutation of time and space.  I am specifically interested in the contemporary transmission of visual culture, and the surreal experiences of women who lead trans-cultural lives.