Sonia Mehra Chawla
Embryonic Plant: Hyperbloom,
2013
Triptych
Mixed media on archival canvas
78 × 103 9/10 in
Mixing figures, flora, fauna, biomorphic forms, and urban landscapes in her lyrical, dreamlike paintings, Sonia Mehra Chawla explores the effects of urban and natural surroundings on the individual, linking the ongoing process of transformation and renewal in cities and nature to the continual growth and evolution of a human being. Rooted in both her own cultural heritage—she claims inspiration from Indian masters like Francis Newton Souza, Tyeb Mehta, and Rameshwar Broota—and in her globalized, urban milieu, Chawla combines representation and abstraction, reality and fantasy in her work. In Membrane, for example, a branching network of crimson veins links a cow, a cityscape, and two women, poetically evoking their interconnectedness and the shared spaces they inhabit.
Indian, b. 1977, Kolkata, India, based in New Delhi, India
courtesy of artnet.com