About
Artist Statement
My practice engages photography and Indian Miniature painting. Moreover, it broadly focuses on key themes: rural landscapes or elements of the natural world such as trees or water; femininity and conceptions of the self within a female body; and representations of cyclical patterns or rhythms in nature and the cosmos. Weaving through these areas is an engagement with Indian and Western notions of aesthetic beauty, and the Taoist spiritual teachings of the Water Tradition that emphasise the importance of stillness, balance and the inter-connectedness of all things.
UK-born with Indian ancestry, my formal art training was initially influenced by Western visual traditions. Since 2021, a profound shift has occurred through a self-directed apprenticeship with master painter and lineage holder Ajay Sharma. Each spring for three months, I visit his studio in India to undertake rigorous learning in Indian Miniature painting fundamentals. Relatively little has changed over centuries, in how materials are made, techniques followed, and how knowledge is transmitted from master to student, for example, about drawing instruction, achievement of technical skills or differences in stylistic conventions between schools of painting. Having been immersed for many years in legacies indebted to my Western art training, I am embracing this opportunity to deeply explore and penetrate my Asian artistic heritage.
A reverence for the ritualistic processes of craft, with a respect for detail, is imperative within my work.
Biography
Neeta Madahar completed a BA in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art (Southampton University) in 1999. She received a scholarship award from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Tufts University, Boston, USA) and graduated with an MFA in Studio Art in 2003. Madahar has exhibited her work extensively in the UK and internationally, including at Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth), Harewood House (Leeds) and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, USA). An exhibition of Madahar’s work was held at the National Science and Media Museum (Bradford), in 2008-09 following her award of the Bradford Fellowship in Photography that year. She has received commissions from organisations including the Glynn Vivian Gallery (Swansea), FACT Liverpool, Film and Video Umbrella (London), and Photoworks (Brighton). Her works are held in private and corporate collections around the world, in addition to major public collections such as the Government Art Collection (London), Harvard Art Museums (Massachusetts, USA), the MIT Art Collection (Massachusetts, USA), the V&A Museum (London) and the Yale Center for British Art (Connecticut, USA).
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