Manish Nai Gujarat, India, b.1980
Manish Nai (b.1980, Gujarat, India) received a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the L.S. Raheja School of Art in Mumbai. Working with materials that are both modest and distinctly Indian—such as jute, newspaper, used clothes, old books, and found or rusted corrugated metal sheets—Nai compresses, reshapes, and reconfigures them into sculptural and pictorial forms. His practice highlights transformation, where the material’s history and memory are preserved while its form becomes entirely new.
Nai has exhibited internationally at institutions including Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Para Site, Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; NTU CCA, Singapore; Het Noordbrabants Museum, Netherlands; and the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago. He has participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014, 2018) and the Shanghai Biennale (2012). His solo exhibitions include Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York; Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris and St. Moritz; Galerie Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai; and Nature Morte, New Delhi. In 2017, the Fondation Fernet Branca in St. Louis, France, presented a comprehensive retrospective of his paintings, murals, sculptures, and photographs.
Click on the link below to read more about Manish Nai in his recent feature on Art Forum.
