Chandrika Marla: Textile Dance of Relationships

The Urge to Merge, acrylic and fabric on canvas, 2011 

Migrating to a new land and finding herself at a crucial crossroads in her life led to Chicago-based artist of Indian origin, Chandrika Marla to transition into the art world six years ago. A graduate of the distinguished Indian fashion school, National Institute of Fashion and Technology (NIFT), she was a former fashion designer for a Delhi export company. “I moved to States in 1998 when I got married and subsequently, began designing clothes for Disney,” Chandrika says. While she enjoyed the experience, she mentions that having to leave Disney actually proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Having sporadically painted before, she utilized the time to hone her own painting technique under the tutelage of a local French artist. Eventually, she decided to embrace art, leaving fashion behind. “Fashion and art was getting muddled up in my head...in fashion, one is always designing for the consumer and validation is based upon if a collection sold well,” she says, remarking that becoming an artist allowed her to experience a great surge of liberation and creativity.

Excluded, acrylic and oil pastel, 2009

Having been immersed in fashion for so long, Chandrika's hand would instinctively move to the familiar rhythms of sketching the female body. “I don't have a pronounced sense of realism, I am more interested in delineating humanistic figures,” she says, mentioning that the figures populating her paintings nowadays are increasingly becoming more and more anthropomorphic over time, vague and blurred in contrast to her earlier works depicting sharply defined figures.

Chandrika's art produces several questions about being an immigrant/artist, especially in context to personal preoccupations of creating and writing about one's homeland while living away from it. For an immigrant artist, how much does their motherland  influence their work (in Chandrika's case, India)? Is she intent on presenting herself as an essentially Indian artist through the basis of her work or do her roots play only a subliminal role in shaping it? Overall, is it imperative that one's immigrant identity always define one's artistic work?

Summer Fragment, acrylic, oil-pastel, and pigment on canvas, 2013

Both as a relic of her previous fashion designer avatar as well as a signature trademark, Chandrika incorporates fabric as an additional layer in her pieces to create a palimpsest of preexisting acrylics, oils, and pastels. In Sudha, for example, she cuts up a table-cloth and places it on the painting as how one would sew the pieces together, explaining, “It was like jigsawing a puzzle together.”

As India possesses incredible textile wealth, Chandrika has vast choices to feature in her work. (One example is Rajasthani block-print.) She explores fabric as means to interrogate the role of clothes in the facades that one presents to the world. In Urge to Merge (pictured first), three fabric bodices dance in a dialogue of sorts against a backdrop of warm, meditative red. Chandrika's works essentially concern themselves with the politics of relationships between women and the fabric, with paint converging to convey the layers nested inside these relationships.

Tulika Ladsariya: Chronicling the Art of Labor

Bricks, 2012, Enamel and Ink on brick

A former banker who found herself inexorably migrating into the world of art, Chicago-based Indian artist, Tulika Ladsariya focuses her artistic lens on exploring the dynamics of labor, language, and literacy through her paintings and sculptures. She describes her paintings as a social commentary on the division of society through the iconography of labor, whereas Tulika's installations are derived from familiar construction materials procured from her surroundings; this enables her to empathize with the workforce that she depicts and thus, think of art as labor.

Vibrant, textured, and punctuated with layers and meanings, Tulika's work takes the viewer into the landscapes and mindscapes that the laborers inhabit. Here she talks to Her Blueprint about the scope of her creative voyage so far.

What initially attracted you towards art? What compels you to keep on creating?
 I started my career working in portfolio management for a multi-national bank. However, I am a very visual person: I see and think in images and color. I enjoy working with my hands, philosophizing and questioning. To that end, a short sabbatical to study art in London turned into a lifelong career.

Many things compel me to create: the love of what I do, the need to make a difference through my art, the fear of obscurity,and the security of what I have renounced to be an artist. It is the desire to give shape to ideas- translating something intangible, like feeling and emotion, into something tangible such as a painting.

Could you take us through a journey of your paintings? How have they evolved in terms of technique and theme? What has remained unchanged? 
My work was initially very influenced by what was around me; specifically, Mumbai, which was in a constant state of disrepair. It then began to engage with the people who build and inhabit it. Some elements of my work are more abstract and others very graphic. The theme has been widening with time, encompassing more of what I feel, rather than merely just what I see. My use of color is one aspect of work which has significantly evolved; even though my palette is still bright and evocative, it has become more balanced over time.

 

Journey by Day, 2010, Mixed Media on Gessobord 'Burden of Dreams' and 'Improbable Elevation' depict realistic figures while 'Palliative Endeavors' is rooted in a much more abstract space. What motivated this transition? What is the essence of 'Palliative Endeavors'? 'Palliative Endeavors' [example from series above] was inspired by the vibrant cityscape. It used geometric shapes and collage to bring together form, texture, and color; it regards the city as a space devoid of humans and the impact of congested living upon the environment. The title of the works refer to my own palliative endeavor to fix the damage inflicted on it through the use of plaster tape [as such used in healing fractures] upon the two-dimensional surface. Moving from the physical space to the people who build and inhabit that space seemed like a natural transition. This gave birth to the series, 'Improbable Elevation' and 'Burden of Dreams' [examples below]. Even my more figurative paintings have elements of texture and abstraction that I weave in and out from.

Graceful Burden (diptych), Acrylic on board, Mixed media on faux brick panel

Mona Kamal: Tracing Journeys

Mona Kamal, Reflections on Memory (2011)

A visual artist, whose origins are rooted in the Indian subcontinent, raised in Canada and currently residing in New York, Mona Kamal engages with photography, video, and installation to create contemporary multi-media narratives about migration, journeys, and identities. As she mentions, she creates fictitious exotic spaces that spark a feeling of nostalgia that tell a story of a lost culture due to immigration. These spaces function as both means to conduct dialogue as well as functioning as dialogues about leaving and recreating home.

What inspires you to create: a thought, image, concept or -ism?

The most basic way of answering this question is that my life inspires me to create. I get my ideas for my artworks from what surrounds me. A lot of it is from reading (literature, non-fiction and newspapers) and the Western perspective of my culture and religion. I feel that I often get ideas for my work based on responses/judgments that I receive in America about identifying myself as a Muslim Pakistani woman. My parents’ history additionally also has been a great inspiration as they, like most Muslims, were greatly affected by the partition of India in 1947 as not only was their country divided...but their family was also split between two countries.

My inspiration most recently comes from the rise of Islamism in South Asia and particularly Pakistan. I feel my art is a voice of resistance against religious fundamentalism and western stereotypes of Islam and South Asian culture and therefore, a manner in which I can preserve a specific history and culture.

You have worked in a variety of media such as installation art and video projects. What compels and attracts you towards each? Do the subject and content of your work influence your decision as to which particular medium you will use?

I remember when I was doing my BFA at NSCAD in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a graduate student told me that once you are confident in your practice and the concepts behind your work, you will feel comfortable about working in different media. I always felt that was a very strong statement: I do feel that an artist should work in different mediums depending on the meaning they are attempting to convey.

Both my video projects and installations are process based so that definitely has compelled me towards both mediums. I find video a unique medium because it captures movement whereas within my installations I am creating a space for the viewer to move about in.

Furthermore, my videos have a performative aspect and many times I am in the videos whereas my installations allow me to play with materials and construct structures. I am telling a story within both, creating spaces that are both physical as well as allowing for a dialogue about identity and migration.

Hot Mess Series, 2012 from mona kamal on Vimeo.
The 'Hot Mess' video series interrogates the expectations placed upon women of a certain color and not choosing to conform to societal expectations. Does gender play a crucial role in determining the trajectories of your artistic and personal lives?

Gender and race are both very significant components of my personal and artistic life (I don’t think my artistic and personal lives are separate).

I have mostly recently gained an interest in feminist writing written by women of colour; these readings have demonstrated the challenges that the 70s feminist movement faced due to their difficulties in perceiving the perspectives of women from the developing world and even visible women minorities in the West.

Mujeres Muralistas or How I "Got Into" College

A Tribute to the Mujeres Muralistas in the Mission Distroct, via Flickr/Franco Folini

Last summer, I decided to pursue an M.F.A. I had recently earned a Master of Arts in Art History, yet the desire to develop my skills as an artist tugged at me throughout my Art History studies. So here I am, starting anew. In order to prepare myself, I decided to take an Intro to Mural Art course, because it pertained to my favorite area in San Francisco--the vibrant Mission district, which is also commonly understood as the "Latino neighborhood."

During one of the early class sessions, my instructor was discussing his early career and passion for mural painting. He was so enamored with becoming a working artist that he aggressively pursued noted Mexican mural artist David Alfaro Siqueiros until he was able to work as his apprentice. He also talked about his visits to several universities in Mexico; during this part of the discussion, he revealed a longstanding cultural bias about women, the arts, and education -- that they do not belong together. The instructor looked me square in the eyes, and said, "You'll appreciate this story."