Meenakshi Nihalani

Coming from a background with the chaos of expressions, Meenakshi is a second-generation Post-Colonial Daughter of her family. Her Grandparents had to migrate from Sindh, the northern part of previous India while escaping the killings through the Arabian Sea to the Independent declared section of the country. It took a lifetime for her community to understand that this deconstruction was permanent enduring the impacts following it. Her works are based on the association of the post-colonial construct to the ecosystem and the communities especially affected by it, leading to personal allegories and the future associated with it. The recent series is based on postcolonial landscape of an agrarian country with the narration of Indigo farming, farmers and the land, a part of the colonial system. Meenakshi’s practice includes drawing based and handstitched Textile Installations and sculptural forms, using mediums as wood, glass, textile, bricks. She represents the stories of the survival of the land and attached to it reflecting episodes which are minimalistic documented in the passages of our history. Incorporating traditional techniques in Installations and sculptures, she emphasizes the medium learnt in her childhood to express ̧ a common technique of stitching taught to her as a girl child, something rather more important than education. My personal preference lies in dramatic visual and large dimension artworks to communicate with the viewer as a narrator. All through human history of mythology and religion, culture, where human behaviour through art has been used as a metaphor for conducting a message to society. I intend to reflect human philosophies utilizing Art.”

Meenakshi Nihalani (Mumbai, Maharashtra) is an active research based Visual Artist from India. She has received her BFA in Sculpture from the Sir J.J. School of Fine Arts, Mumbai. She has recently exhibited in Berlin, Germany, representing the Agrarian culture and social and psychological impact of British Colonialism on the Indian farmers and the ecosystem emphasizing the Absurdism of politics and power on mankind. She has received the Scholarship Residency by Fundaziun Nairs in Switzerland in 2019 and also has attended residencies in Armsterdam, Germany, Switzerland and India. Her practice involves expression of forms through her sculpture, textile installations & drawings depicting ironical glimpses of situations in our postcolonial society. Involving Textile and Sculptural forms, the artworks reflects the absurd psychology of mankind. The artist currently works from Mumbai and Baroda, India.