Neha Vedpathak: Defiant

N’Namdi Contemporary - Miami

By Raisa Clavijo

“Defiant” included 13 works by Neha Vedpathak, which offer a look at her most recent artistic production. The pieces, comprised of multiple layers of both materials and meanings, invited the viewer to go beyond the surface to reveal the personal vision of the artist regarding her creative environment and the physical landscape in which she moves.

Most of the works were created during her stay in Phoenix and Detroit, where she currently resides. Through them, Vedpathak proposes an investigation of the landscape, light, architecture and sociocultural context of both cities. For this artist, all physical space coexists and interacts harmoniously with different elements, objects, materials, feelings and memories. In addition, it also impacts viewers’ perception of it to the extent that he dialogues with his past and present experiences. Consequently, in the perception of a specific landscape, experiences overlap, deconstruct and interconnect like woven fabrics, like the surface of her works.

Neha Vedpathak, Bhaba, 2016, plucked paper and pigment, 11 x 15ft. Courtesy of the artist and N’Namdi Contemporary, Miami.

Her creative process involves a technique she calls “plucking,” which consists of separating and intertwining the fibers of hand-made Japanese paper. The surfaces obtained, rich in texture, are then soaked in various pigments of natural origin: sand, earth, graphite and extracts, among other materials. She later submerges them in acrylic polymer in order to give them rigidity and resistance. Occasionally, she adds objects, whether it be a stone, mirror or fragment of a piece of furniture, found during a creative process that, as we pointed out earlier, summarizes her personal experience of living in specific urban landscapes. These objects create invisible links and narratives between the artwork itself and the places from which they come, their sounds and memories. In some works, titles help the viewer piece together these associations of meanings. Ultimately, the working process is as or more important than the final result, combining the basic variables of time and the ritualistic nature of each phase of the work. The process is slow and repetitive, a long series of phases during which the surface of the material begins to change as the artist’s thoughts change and mature.

Neha Vedpathak, See What You Don’t See, 2017, plucked paper and pigment, 70” x 70.” Courtesy of the artist and N’Namdi Contemporary, Miami.

Among the displayed works, of note is Bhaba, a piece that was part of a project exhibited last year at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Bhaba establishes a virtual dialogue between Particles, Jottings, Sparks by Rabindranath Tagore, Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan and the artist’s interpretation of the work of these two authors. Bhaba implies an accumulation of reflections on the meaning of life, the objects of desire, the relationship between man and his natural and social environments, as well as the irony and paradigmatic nature of these reflections.

Each of Vedpathak’s works constitutes a map of memory. In this way, the gallery space gathers a compilation of moments. Each piece challenges the viewer to initiate a new cycle of interpreting and deconstructing meanings.

(March 16 - May 30, 2017)

Filed Under: Reviews