DHRUVI ACHARYA
A new group of works on paper have been created by the artist Dhruvi Acharya during the period that has come to be known as “the lockdown” due to the Covid-19 virus. Confined within our homes, unable to socialize, for a period of three months has been a startling experience for most people. As the lockdown is lifted hesitantly, we each have the choices to venture out or remain in as much or as little as we feel comfortable doing. The virus, they say, will be with us forever, our vigilance against coming in contact with it certainly at the forefront of our minds for many months to come.
Views from the artist's home and studio in Mumbai
The vocabulary of Acharya’s paintings and watercolors has been developing consistently for the past twenty years. She continues a long reign of figurative art which has dominated India for most of the past 100 years. This vocabulary of the figurative has mostly concentrated on female subjects and mostly eschewed any tendencies towards the saccharine, the amiable, and the jovial. In fact, Acharya’s depictions, in general, can said to verge on the psychologically uncomfortable.
About Dhruvi Acharya
Dhruvi Acharya received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, USA in 1998, and completed her Post Baccalaureate in 1996 from the same college. Acharya began exhibiting her works professionally in 1998 in the USA where she spent 10 years.
Acharya has held solo exhibitions with Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, Nature Morte in New Delhi, Gomez Gallery in Baltimore and Kravets/Wehby in New York. Her selected participations include shows at the San Jose Museum of Art, Griffith University in Brisbane, BosePacia Modern in New York, National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai and Queens Museum of Art in New York.
Acharya has been the recipient of the FICCI Young Woman Achievers award in 2013, and was featured on the cover of India Today in 2005.
The artist lives and works in Mumbai.
