Shalina Vichitra
(b. 1973)
Shalina Vichitra’s works function as visceral geographical annotations and recordings that employ the tools of cartography to address the complex subject of ‘belonging’ and the fragile balance between the natural world and human habitation. Space is configured not as a container, but is continually ‘produced’ through human activity and it cannot be verified, surveyed, mapped or measured. We’re constantly in the process of losing and finding our bearings against this gamut and the physiological, spatial and temporal ‘presents’ here coincide to construct the artist’s process of inquiry about a space to which we might belong. Lived spaces communicate our sensorial experience of remembering or imagining a place, as opposed to being within or outside of it. Informed by the multifarious relationships that individuals and collectives have with shelters and the environment, the work explores the personal understanding of a place as a filtered sequence of encounters that encompasses its own set of narratives, aesthetic textures and subliminal thoughts. “Congruous” offers itself as a visual metaphor of lived experiences and a tactile archive to address the subject of ‘belonging’. It explores the physical as well as psychological makeup of a shelter and our sense of space within it.
Shalina Vichitra completed her BFA and MFA at the College of Art, New Delhi. She has had solo shows with Gallery Art Motif; Art Inc. and Anant Art. Group shows include India Art Fair with LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (2023-22); Art Mumbai with LATITUDE 28, Mumbai (2023); Delhi Contemporary Art Week with LATITUDE 28, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2023-22); ‘Inner Life of Things’ curated by Roobina Karode, KNMA (2022); ‘Playhouse of Her Mind’, LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (2021); ‘When is Empathy too much’, LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (2020); ‘Grain’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi; ‘Negotiating Matters’ curated by Roobina Karode, ‘Summer’, Nature Morte; ‘Emerging India’, Royal College London; ‘Who do you think I am’, The Gallery at Cork Street London; ‘Contemporary Indian art’, Mueller and Plate, Munich, Contemporary Indian Art – Visual Arts Gallery; ‘Unearthing Memories of Civilisation’ Kiran Nadar Museum curated by Roobina Karode (2020); Fusing Barn Biennale, Taiwan. Solo onsite project “A thousand white Flags” supported by The India Art Fair 2019, New Delhi (2019). Shalina lives and works in Gurugram, India.
