Allegorical Narratives

Artist: Dhruvi Acharya

February 17, 2005 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

The painter Dhruvi Acharya, who currently divides her time between New York and Mumbai, began painting her memories of home soon after reaching the US in 1995. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, where she studied with acclaimed painter Grace Hartigan. She was offered gallery representation while still in college, and since then has been exhibiting her work in the US and India. Her most recent solo show “Figment” was at Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, in November 2004.

Dhruvi applies personal, ancient and pop-culture symbols and metaphors to create narratives in a world where thoughts and imaginations are as visible as the “reality.” Informed by her experiences and dreams, by events and philosophies, her paintings explore the relationships between speech and communication, solitude and loneliness. Influenced artistically by Indian miniature paintings, contemporary comic books and the Japanese Superflat movement, her narrative paintings are a fusion of artistic genres. The paintings also reflect the psychological melee caused by balancing the twin roles of a painter and a mother.

In her current work, the artist focuses, through allegory, on the poetic moments in one’s emotional and intellectual quarrel with oneself.  With her unique technique of paint application, Dhruvi creates paintings with intriguing, uniform surfaces where the images and patterns visually recede and advance. This presentation will include Dhruvi’s work from 1995 to the present, with a focus on the paintings shown in “Figment”. The painter will also talk about her influences, which include the work of American artists Lari Pittman and Margaret Kilgallen, and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.