Divya Mehra

Bio
Divya Mehra is a multimedia artist who recently earned an MFA from Columbia University, New York. She obtained her BFA with Honors from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art. In her practice she explores issues of cultural displacement and hybridization, deploying a humorous perspective in the execution of the works. Her work has been included in a number of exhibitions and screenings across North America.

Artist Statement
Joke: An Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man, and a Pakistani were all on a train. The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: “They are ten a penny in my country.” The Japanese man threw an expensive Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: “These are ten a penny in my country.” The Englishman then picked up the Pakistani and threw him out of the train window. When the other travelers asked him to account for his actions, he said: “They are ten a penny in my country.”

Mehra’s work uses humor to activate repressed impulses, disrupt convention, and explore power relations in terms of gender and sexuality, as well as racial and cultural identities. Humor is deployed to lure her audience into the work by creating a false sense of comfort; by making the object of mockery [the artist] personal and familiar, thus making the viewer accountable for their own absurdities, prejudices, and personal faults. Mehra’s work draws from the pathetic, deeply personal, and unspoken intentions, judgments, and one-liners derived from everyday experiences and transforms them into sharp and “not-so-easy-to-swallow” representations of the world.

Work Details:
The Postulation of Reality
Hot pink neon
24″ x 96″
2009