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IAAC Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora 2013
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| Aaliyah Gupta |
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Aaliyah Gupta
Web: www.aaliyahgupta.net |
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ARTIST STATEMENT
My latest work is about movement and density, growth and decay, symbiosis and co-existence. Walking in the forests here in the Northwest, I am struck by the sheer mass of things growing. Entangled, on top of each other, inside tree trunks, under the spongy carpet of leaves. Moss on fallen trees, fungi in crevices, shoots sprouting out of nurse logs, skeletal remains of burnt trees. And water everywhere. Beaded droplets on leaves, rivulets on ferns, cascades from the sky, vortexes on the coastline. These paintings are about nature and about life. The dark mystery of things as they grow and decay. The upheavals, natural and political, that impact our day to day existence. The vortexes that we find ourselves in.
Earlier work from the Dispersion Series focused on the idea of dispersion (an act, state or instance of dispersing or of being dispersed ), a study of the movement of particles, ash, smoke, clouds, oil, water, wind, sand. Natural disasters across the world have had a global impact on multiple levels – environmental, economic, sociological. An Icelandic eruption that dispersed ash and smoke, affected the ability of people and commodities to move across continents and seas for weeks and transformed the geography and economy of south Iceland. The uncontainable gush of oil spreading through the deep waters of the Gulf, is impacting the lives of people, wildlife and the coastal environment in ways that we still do not fully comprehend. Flash floods, tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes, all part of natural cycles caused by the movement of air, water, land and pressure, are wreaking havoc wherever they occur, displacing entire communities and cultures. |
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| BIO |
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| Aaliyah Gupta was born in Kolkata, and has lived, worked and exhibited in India, Denmark and the USA. She lives in Seattle where she makes art, works towards social change, grows vegetables and loves to feed people. She is happiest when she can do all of these concurrently, which is not always good for her sanity. Aaliyah received an MFA in painting from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. |
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