Important Notice

Born in Baroda in 1972, Hema Upadhyay's works combine painting and photography in collages that raise issue of loss, disenchantment and dislocation in modern urban life, and, more generally, questions of security and survival in a violent world. Moving from Baroda to the megalopolis of Mumbai, these are issues that the artist has encountered herself, lending a note of autobiography to her work. It is not surprising, then, that her own portraits... Born in Baroda in 1972, Hema Upadhyay's works combine painting and photography in collages that raise issue of loss, disenchantment and dislocation in modern urban life, and, more generally, questions of security and survival in a violent world. Moving from Baroda to the megalopolis of Mumbai, these are issues that the artist has encountered herself, lending a note of autobiography to her work. It is not surprising, then, that her own portraits feature prominently amongst the photographs she collages onto her painted and patterned surfaces.

Through her body of work, "Hema articulates the unspeakable, through unpalatable narratives , visually disturbing collages that are intertwined with appealing but complicated designs. These repetitive grand patterns consciously expose the unsymmetry of reality…Upadhyay assumes the role of a participant and that of a clinical analyst simultaneously" (Johny ML, Acrobats and their Scenes, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, Singapore, 2008, unpaginated).

In the present lot, a set of two works executed in her signature mixed media and collage technique, Upadhyay uses the image of a snow globe to articulate the claustrophobia of urban life. What may appear to some as an enchanted city is no more than a bubble – fragile and transitory – where promises may never be realized and dreams remain distant. Juxtaposing her self-image with those of bloody, severed limbs floating and falling like the fake snow in the glass dome, the artist also reflects on our contemporary culture of violence, particularly that which is enacted on the female body.

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