Urban Chos Hema Upadhyay

Art & Deal Correspondent

Everything she signifies is shown to us from a high vantage point – its an almost aerial view of multiple colours and insignias of stacks and shacks with their blue plastic cover-ings seeking to ward off the merciless rain –as she sits in reflective reverie this artist quietly looks out across her city, Mumbai. For her the city is more than just an entity and it has its own time zone in the scheme of things-it may over time disappear or be removed at any point in time.

Years ago at her show in Vadehras she stated: “I like to tell any stories, whether real or imaginative. These are even reflections of one’s phobias, shortcomings. The recurring theme in my work is autobiographical. In addition, it is the cathartic factor that becomes the reason to take these objects and convert their ability. Yes…my work is cathartic in process,” Last year artist Hema Upadhyay’s works at Chemould Prescott in Mumbai was the stuff of a heady genius who ruminates in her own solitude as she mulls societies and urban chaos. According to ace critic and curator Nancy Adjania “Hema Upadhyay is adept at playing with scales of attention. “ In Fish in a Dead Landscape, she challenges her viewers with contradictory moments of encounter.