Swarupa Shah Profile   |    Summary For Swarupa, like so many artists of her time, the body is the focus of significant ideas, issues and images. Although she studied sculpture, she was greatly inspired by Gulammohammed Sheikh who was then teaching at the Department of painting, a probable reason why she switched to painting on completion of her studies. Her time at Baroda was a time of radical rethinking about the structure of visual language itself.. the earlier... Read More For Swarupa, like so many artists of her time, the body is the focus of significant ideas, issues and images. Although she studied sculpture, she was greatly inspired by Gulammohammed Sheikh who was then teaching at the Department of painting, a probable reason why she switched to painting on completion of her studies. Her time at Baroda was a time of radical rethinking about the structure of visual language itself.. the earlier narrative mode as exemplified in the work of, for instance Gulammohammed Sheikh and others came to be overlaid by a complexity of sources that drew upon a diverse range of practices and forms. And Swarupa belongs to that generation that was intimately involved in the shift. From the start, Swarupa`s paintings were undoubtedly those of a woman`s. Although she herself refuses to allow her work to be subsumed under the overarching category of feminism. A number of her works are infact about the experience of being a woman. Swarupa`s invocation of nature/women connection approximates writer/eco feminist Vandana Shiva`s (whose work she greatly admires) discussion of woman`s special relation with nature. Swarupa`s work play upon the often contradictory yet overlapping registers of the personal and the social, and correspondingly the inner and the outer worlds. Although the structure of her visual language is not in itself particularly new, what sets it apart is perhaps the uniquely personal way in which she traverses, in her work a number of problems, artistic as well as personal as those belonging to the real world, inflected by her feminity. The small format itself that she chooses could be read as either a resistance for the prevailing demand for extravagantly large works, or on the other hand, as a conscious decision to work in a format that makes possible a greater intimacy, a greater coordination of the body and soul raising out of a smaller field of forms. Read Less Born 1967    Education 1992 M.A. (FINE) faculty of fine arts, M.S.U. Baroda Exhibitions Solo Shows 1998 Exhibition of paintings, Nazar, Baroda. 1999... Solo Shows 1998 Exhibition of paintings, Nazar, Baroda. 1999 Exhibition of paintings, Guild, Mumbai. Groups shows 1991 Exhibition of "small sculptures from India" In Namibia and Zimbabve, by ICCR. 1995 Exhibition of paintings with another artist at faculty of fine arts, Baroda and Artists centre, Mumbai 1998 41st National Exhibition of Art, New Delhi 1998 "Drawing '98' at Nazar, Baroda. 1999-00 Miniature Format show at Sans tache, Mumbai. 1999-00 Harmony show, 2000, Mumbai. 1999-00 "Juxtapose" at Son-et-Luminiere, Mumbai. 2001 Art auction for the earthquake relief fund (bhuj) at Art Core gallery faculty of fine arts, Baroda. 2001 "Seamiess" exhibition of painting at Nazar, Baroda. 2002 "The cupid connection" Exhibition of paintings at Art core, Baroda. 2002 "The Banayan City" exhibition of paintings at Nazar. Baroda. 2002 A group show by Sahmat to generate relief funds for Gujarat victims, In Delhi and Mumbai. 2002 Exhibition of Paintings "voices against violence" at faculty of fine arts, Baroda. 2003 Across The Threshhold, Indian Contemporary Art Show at Art 21 in Palo Alto-C.A. Read More Read Less Read Less
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