Indar Pasricha Fine Arts | Indian & South Asian Art in London

Mithu Sen

Untitled, 2006, Unsigned
Mixed media on hand made paper
71 × 57 cms

Born in 1971 in West Bengal, Mithu Sen obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in painting from Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan,in West Bengal and later, completed a postgraduate program at the Glasgow School of Art in the United Kingdom on the prestigious Charles Wallace India Trust Award for 2000-2001. She won a million Rupees when she won THE ŠKODA PRIZE for Indian contemporary art in 2010

Mithu Sen's work consists of mixed media installations as well as paintings; her erotic, sometimes sexually explicit images and objects combine a wicked sense of humour with a unique sensitivity to shapes and colours. In contemporary art practices, Mithu Sen has attained a vibrant position with her multi-layered works. She voices her ideology through her generic forms and objects that have come out of a meticulous and well-thought process. Her work comes from her immediate surroundings and people contemplating the new and radical modes of depicting certain things while deconstructing the older ones.

What informs the contemporary art scene is its rich diversity. The Statement: “All That’s Solid Melts Into Air” has a significance however to do with recent developments whereby a number of new comers on the art scene, away from the mainstream are eagerly watched by galleries, buyers, the press and public alike. They are coming mainly from Russia, China and India.

As former members of the Communist regime, the success of young Russian and Chinese artists on the Western European art scene and market alike is to be anticipated, not least for the novelty aspect. India however has been of interest - albeit only from the historical perspective for some considerable time, but paradoxically perhaps, the contemporary art scene was neglected: either it was not accessible, or it was not relevant, or of no interest artistically, or of no interest commercially.

'All that's solid melts into air' were Karl Marx's prophetic words written about a century ago informing the postmodernist process of fragmentation, whereby all that was solid is broken down into something quite else and this is the angle from which this young artist’s work ought to be 're' interpreted.