Swati Khurana

Bio
Swati Khurana is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been shown locally at Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Bose Pacia, Center for Book Arts, Exit Art, Momenta Art, Jersey City Museum, and Rush Arts; and internationally in Costa Rica, The Gambia, Italy, India, and Nepal. Awards include: Jerome Foundation, Bronx Museum’s Artist-in-Marketplace, Aljira’s Emerge, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has had residencies at Henry Street Settlement, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Pace University, and Kartong Village Development Committee (The Gambia, West Africa). She will be presenting her newest work in a solo exhibition at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai in January 2010. Swati is a founding member of SAWCC.

Artist Statement
As an Indian immigrant woman, my work explores gender, ethnicity, and the seductive promises of rituals. After my own multi-day Hindu wedding, I began exploring ritualized performances wherein brides become consumable artifacts. I digitally collaged drawings of my own wedding photos with found images of sumptuous imperial architecture, ethnic-chic interior design, and animal coloring books to reveal a glossy world of captivity. From exploring female archetypes and rituals, I have also been exploring representations of romantic love. By manipulating film stills and clips, I revisited particular moments when Bollywood actors sing, dance, and gaze love and collaged them in dream-like landscapes amplified by illusory chandeliers. I then looked at the myth-making in my own life and have made a series of sculptures in which objects—a decade of love letters written to and by me, my engagement ring, and wedding jewelry—are suspended in bird cages. In my work, I am interested in the connection between the personal and the popular, specifically the romantic, sexual, and cultural expectations that are placed upon women. Through the creation of highly mediated and constructed compositions and narratives, my work hopes to displace notions of authenticity and allow for possibilities of re-imagining subjectivities, landscapes, and memories.

Work Details:

Wedding Trousseau
Embroidery collaboration with grandmothers
Ink and embroidery floss on cotton
Dimensions variable (approx 11″ x 11″ ea.)
2009