In the Belly of a Slovenly Crow

10/09/20 – 04/10/20

PV 10/09/20, 12:00 - 21:00, Booking required

“Using mundane acts of either activity or passivity and taking a cue from the abjection and otherness of the female form, I depict counter narratives that question how human beings grapple with the I & the other, the inside & the outside, the subject & the object.”-SM

TRG is delighted to present a new series of paintings by recent Slade graduate Shailee Mehta (b. India 1998). Her artistic practice extrapolates memory and nostalgia to a context of history, mythology and contemporary society. Her work is descriptive of a poetics of space where ideas of interiority, the interior and the exterior are placed next to each other. The horizon line and its indistinct, divisive nature is employed as a trope to create a dialogue between the here and there. Within this, narratives of looking and being looked at take up multiple meanings such as desire, contemplation or rejection.

“Otherness in my work takes form in either the context of exclusion, subjection or disregard, or its mystification through mythology and superstitions. These structures overlap through familiar motifs of the public & the private and props & objects that create a simulacrum for self-referencing mythologies.”-SM

In Lost Slippers and The Sun Might Lose Its Bearings in Your Unreliable Hands there is a sense of anxiety, where the scene is held together by multiple female gazes, as if habitually waiting for a known unknown. The uncanny combination of industrial oranges and pinks with the earthen tones evokes a similar uncertainty of place and time.

“Throughout this entire series, I was actively looking at Hindu mythology and iconography which has several examples of animals being portrayed as demons, gods or as carriers and helpers which falls in contrast to their domestication and deification today.”-SM

This becomes a significant point of entry into the politics of subjecting animals to our desires through rituals and superstitions.

“The friction between the traditional and the modern, which materialises itself in various forms such as goddess worship in Hindu society, against the tangible political and cultural threats to the ordinary woman in India, is another corollary of my larger interest in womanhood. This existential conflict can also be reflected in domestic life, where the presence of a woman’s body is rejected and praised at the same time.”-SM

BIO

Born in Indore (India, 1998), Shailee Mehta completed her Foundation Diploma from UAL, London in 2015 and her BFA at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2020. She has been part of various group shows including STOMACH, Hoxton Arches Gallery (London 2017), AIRGENTUM Hoja de Ruta Residency (Spain 2018), Space 118 (Mumbai, 2019), AucArt Exhibition and Sale (2020). Mehta currently lives and works out of London. Adopting an expansive approach to cultural work that regards the artist’s role beyond a studio, she has also worked at The Museum of Modern Art assisting the curatorial team on their expansion project and Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018 as an Art Mediator.