Shailee Mehta
[b. 1998, India] lives and works in Goa. Her artistic practice stems from an ongoing dialogue between a personal space of imagination and nostalgia, and the weaving of history, memory and contemporary narratives. Working extensively with elements of figuration and embodiment, she situates the female body as a central agential subject in her explorations around femininity and visibility. Mehta’s figures are imagined in radical settings, where nature, wildlife and bodies seem to merge. The figures occupy a liminal space that lies somewhere between wild and domestic. The blurring of lines between interior/exterior, natural/domesticated also alludes to our understanding of the inner self and destabilises simplistic classifications, not only of wild and domestic, but also of human and nonhuman. Mehta’s works subvert patriarchal tropes, gendered discourse and delve into our instinctual impulses to recover lost modes of being within nature and the construction of personal identity.
Mehta received a BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2020. Selected exhibitions include a solo show, Mudbath at Indigo+Madder, 2023; In the Belly of a Slovenly Crow, a solo show 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 Press:
FAD, THE TOP 5 ART EXHIBITIONS TO SEE IN LONDON IN JULY, 2023
