Shailee Mehta | Mudbath

23 June - 29 JuLy 2023

indigo+madder is thrilled to present Mudbath, a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Shailee Mehta.

In her new series of work, Mehta continues her interest in ideas of female embodiment, desire, and the ethics of care to examine personal identity, agency and joyfulness.

Alongside the introduction of several autobiographical elements, the series also marks a shift into new territory. Figures are now enmeshed deeply within scenes of abundant nature, where markers of human habitation seem to be dissolving into the wild. We are transported into terrains where wild grass, undomesticated dogs/wolves and swampy landscapes encroach upon human habitation. The powerful and mysterious notion of liminal space is consistently explored in the works, and a hopeful, ecocentric social imaginary is delineated. In several scenes, nature, wildlife and bodies seem to radically merge and transform into a sensitively built ecology. The paintings allude to the new terrain Mehta finds herself in, having moved studios to the lush environs of Goa from London. Daily life now includes rituals of feeding stray dogs, walks in semi-wild landscapes and falling asleep to the sound of animals howling. In the shapeshifting, hybrid terrain of the region, patterns of birth, growth, preservation, decay and rebirth play out within earshot.

In Becoming, the figures seem completely engrossed in a mud bathing ritual, their colours and forms almost merging with their natural surroundings. The painting explores mud as a site of play and transformation – messy, uncontrollable and nurturing. It not only references the malleability and medicinal properties of the material, as well as the rituals we develop in connection to nature, but also alludes to the politics of skin tone. Our untethering from the environment in urban settings sometimes means that organic substances such as mud are considered dirty and undesirable. Terms such as unkempt, unclean, tainted, and dirty are used to induce female shame and regulate behaviour. The work pushes back against these ideas - foregrounding the transformation of the self via the sensorial. It considers the body as a site of selfhood that not only reflects cultural norms but can be a site of active resistance to them.

Stray, the largest work in the exhibition, continues this examination of the self through ideas of care and connectedness. Imbued with a theatrical quality, the composition takes inspiration from early South Asian Mughal and Pahari paintings. It features various figures in states of leisure, enacting imagined mythologies and narratives where animals and women are engaged in a dialogue - a wildness of the psyche suggested through companionship. For Mehta, the interdependence alluded to in these scenes, is a recognition of the value of vulnerability, social bonding and connectedness. Alongside self-portraits, scenes of connection featuring groups of figures in natural settings appear in works across the show – The clearing contains an interior scene with a self-portrait of the artist asleep below window-like portals – one of which opens out into a dream-like landscape full of blackbucks roaming, feeding and playing.

Interwoven within the works, are elements of history, memory, desire and nostalgia. Several paintings in the show rest on rosewood panels that reference the hybrid Indo-Portuguese furniture of Goa. In Grazed, a forest fire blazes, the flames rising up softly, mimicking the tree tops. Their bright yellow peaks and smoke appear like bright foliage, camouflaging the reality of the scene – a reminder perhaps of our current apathy and the impending climate crisis. A fiery scarlet glow also seems to light up the two figures in Like the red of the forest, a vivid and enigmatic scene of two women embracing. The ethereal composition is a celebration of belonging and intimacy. In A case for sita(phal) I & II, custard apple, a local fruit, with an intensely sweet and sticky flesh is consumed with bare hands. There is code switching between cultures and histories as we move through the various hybrid spheres that make up Mehta’s own multiplicity.

Through an exploration of real and imagined assimilation with nature, Mehta’s paintings powerfully investigate the unbridled potential of intimacy and the subversive power of desire and hope.

Shailee Mehta (b. 1998, India) lives and works in Goa. Mehta received a BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2020. Her solo exhibition Mudbath opened at indigo+madder in June 2023. Selected exhibitions include New Ancients, Guts, July 2023 (upcoming); In the Belly of a Slovenly Crow a solo at The Residence Gallery London, 2020; The Place of Complete Surprise, indigo+madder x Sadie Coles, The Shop, Sadie Coles, London, 2022; There goes the neighbourhood, Castor, London, 2021; Lotus-Eaters at indigo+madder (London, 2022), Run with the Wolves, Lawrie-Shabibi, Dubai 2021; Les Danses Nocturnes, France, 2021 with East Contemporary and A Small Dent in the Air, Grove Collective, London, 2021

SELECTED WORKS