Shilpa Nikam
Visual Artist
Art by the Sea – 4thEdition
A Platform for Voice of Women Artists 2020
A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.” – Grace Hartigan, American abstract expressionist painter.
Women have long played a crucial role in the India's arts scene. As reflectors, translators, and mediators Indian women artists, have emphasized societal issues, including racial and gender equality, civil rights, sexual politics, cultural and social identity, and globalization in the form of paintings, sculptures, and installations since pre-independence times.
And despite the decades that have transpired since, many have faced -- and continue to face challenges resulting from gender bias, whether it is difficulty finding opportunities to train or sell art, or a lack of critical recognition.
In the 4th Edition of Art by the Sea, we have collaborated with 15 powerful women artists from India working in different genre articulating their voices through their art.
It is platform for women artists to come out of their studios, on the streets, brushes in their hands, facilitating conversations with communities, transforming them into art, and claiming public space.
Art Camp at Chinmaya Vibhooti, Kolvan,
between Lonavala and Pune. 2016, 2019
BODY
Curated by - JohnyML
Shamghumukham Art Museum, Thiruvananthapuram
Artist Shilpa Nikam's work stands at the precipice of absolute abstraction and non-formative figuration. In the works displayed at the show, Shilpa tries to bring out the relation between pain and the innards of the human body. Pain acts as a unifying currency for all living beings be it physical or mental, actual or imagined Shilpa goes to the root of this pain and tries to bring it out in the abstract lexicon she has honed in her practice over time. Scars, wounds, tears, ruptures, cuts and shears appear and dissipate in her works which address the human psychological and physical body. In her works, the human body and its skin is a conflict zone of ideologies and thoughts, be they biological or political, at times nurturing or destroying, constantly mirroring the macrocosmic world at microcosmic levels.
INTERNATIONAL NON TOXIC PRINTMAKING WORKSHOP CUM SEMINAR 2019
Indira Kala sangeet Vishwavidhyalaya ,Khairagarh,
Swami Bhaktiyoga Samadhi Seva Trust
an Artists’ Retreat on his first nirvan anniversary at Rishikesh from 25th-31st March 2018.
LALIT KALA AKADEMI Regional center CHENNAI Organized by ETHNIC MIND SCAPE - 4 th National Painting workshop at University College of Visual Art Davangere, Karnatyaka
L O C Line of Control
49th ANNUAL EXHIBITION
at Birla Academy of Art, Kolkata
Dehleez - The Threshold
When the line of control crosses over from the political or public into the private and the personal, the impact is more multilayered. In a familial situation the burden of one ego, imbalances the delicate balance of the home. Here the artist extrapolates the movement of lines of control taking birth in a very personal realm and then proliferating by leaps and bounds to the public and social realms. But Nature has its own lines of control and imposes them when needed. Women are the embodiment of Nature, is what the artist relates to in this installation work. If nothing can stop nature from crossing lines of control, then why would women be far behind.
If merely being born a girl itself is seen as a line of control in patriarchal mindsets, then it is time to deny and defy such systems and move out. In this installation made with organic and natural elements, the artist
depicts an area of sand and an larger area of mud, separated by a Dehleez - The Threshold, the entrance to a home, decorated as an invitation to all the gods and goddesses of prosperity especially Goddess Lakshmi, by imprinting her footsteps facing inward. The work shows a pair of footprints of a woman (the artist’s ) moving from the sand area, an arid infertile zone, crossing over the threshold, into a zone of growth and prosperity. The foot prints on the wet mud outside sprout vegetation as a symbol of creativity. This is a portrayal of the woman going out of her shackled existence and negotiating her role in the house, society and the world.