Mequitta Ahuja

Mequitta Ahuja
Born 1976
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Alma mater Hampshire College
University of Illinois
Movement Contemporary Art
Website MequittaAhuja.com

Mequitta Ahuja (born 1976) is a contemporary American feminist painter of African American and South Asian descent who lives in Baltimore, Maryland.[1][2] Ahuja creates works of self-portraiture that combine themes of myth and legend with personal identity.[3]

Early life

Mequitta Ahuja was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. [4] Growing up in a largely white community in Connecticut, Ahuja had little contact with the African American community and culture she was born into. Coming from an interracial Indian and African American family in that environment, the intricacies of identity, in particular her own, became important fuel for her work today.[5][1]

She received her BA at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1998, and her MFA at University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003, where she was mentored by contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall.[6]

Career

In 2007, in Ahuja's debut exhibition in New York city, New York Times art critic Holland Cotter said of Ahuja's work, "Referring to the artist's African-American and East Indian background, the pictures turn marginality into a regal condition". Ahuja's art explores the social construction of issues such as race, gender, and identity through a technique of self-portraiture. To create her paintings, Ahuja relies on a three-step process that involves performance, photography, and drawing/painting. Ahuja begins by developing a series of performances involving costumes, props, and poses. With the aid of a remote shutter, she then photographs her performances and documents them as "non-fictional source material." Finally, she incorporates these photographs into her invented material, resulting in her completed self-portraits.

Ahuja has discussed her paintings as being feminist,[2] referring to the assertive, self-sufficient female presence prevalent in her work, and frequently turns to her African American and South Asian roots in her consideration of identity issues. She states that through her art, "I feel I can have relationships to these groups on my own terms".[1] In 2007, Ahuja was included in the exhibition Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum of Art,[7] and in 2009 her painting "Dream Region" was featured as the cover of the book War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art.[8] Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States as well as in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, India and Dubai, and she has been the recipient of multiple awards for her art, including the Tiffany Foundation Award in 2011[9], a 2009 Joan Mitchell Award[10], and a 2008 Houston Artadia Prize. In 2010, Ahuja was profiled as an "Artist to Watch" in the February edition of ArtNews.[2]

Ahuja appropriates ancient works of myth and legend, such as the fifteenth century Persian manuscript and Mughal miniature paintings, into her own commitment to certain kinds of identity fabrication. She articulated her own artistic style as "Of primary concern to me is the agency we have to self-invent and self-represent... creative processes that are necessarily bricolage. We draw on personal and cultural history as well as our creative imaginations". In her projects "Auto cartography I" and "Rhyme Sequence: Wiggle Waggle", the pictorial styles of the paintings are cross-cultural as well as autobiographical.[11] Western art historical references are also apparent in Abuja's work, from early Italian Renaissance paintings to impressionism and post-impressionism. Combining those Western art cannons with South Asian art traditions, Ahuja is said to "reclaim creative authorship" or agency in her self-portraiture.[12]

Ahuja cites her work as "automythography," an expansion of feminist Audre Lorde's "biomythography." Ahuja describes "automythography" as a "combination of personal narrative with cultural and personal mythology."[5]

Ahuja often paints over her own work, regarding failed paintings as an opportunity, which "allows for the sort of things you can't plan for."[6] Ahuja is also interested in the process, building surfaces by painting, stamping to create a complex surface. "I'm thinking of the ground as a cultural space. Instead of starting with the plain page, I'm starting it with this layer of culture so that when I'm building my imagery, it's really a wrestle between the figure and the ground. In the end, there's this integrated, stitched together element between them. . . I'm interested in mixing those traditions: flatness of space, but also some perspectival space and depth into the surface. I think that's where we are in painting. I think we, as artists, now have free range to take what we want from history." [13]

Works

Mequitta Ahuja, The Italy Drawings - Duomo, colored pencil on paper
Colored pencil on paper.

In 2008, Ahuja created Tress IV, with the aim to convert the image of African American hair to a "space of infinite creative possibilities or generative possibilities." Ahuja believes that African American hair is often weighted down with "personal and cultural history." By exaggerating the image of African American hair, it shows the value that hair has in the lives of black people and how they are constantly evolving the standard of beauty, moving away from a more Eurocentric to Afrocentric idea of beauty.[5] Her two central concerns during this period were "self-invention and self-representation."[4]

Ahuja was compelled to study myths, folklore and ancient works as a way to discuss how they are represented in art. She combines her own cultural heritage with the Western art canon to explore stories and imagery related to her experience.[14]

Exhibitions

2005: Dancing on the Hide of Shere Khan, 12X12, MCA, Chicago, IL, November 5–27, 2005 [6]

2007: BravinLee Programs, New York, NY, April 27 - June 2, 2007

2008: Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, November 21, 2008 - January 10, 2009

2009: Automythography I: BravinLee Programs, New York, NY, April 3 - May 10, 2009

2009: Automythography II: Arthouse, Austin, TX, October 24, 2009 - January 2, 2010.[15]

2010: Usable Pasts: Artists in Residence Exhibition, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, July 15 to October 24, 2010[16]

2010: Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition: Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, October 23, 2009 - September 6, 2010

2010: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France, April 10 - May 22, 2010

2011: The Armory Show: Galerie Nathalie Obadia, March 3-March 6, 2011

2012: Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA, Dec 13 - March 10, 2012

2013: Portraiture Now: Drawing on the Edge, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, November 16, 2012 - August 1, 2013[17]

2013: Thierry Goldbery, New York, NY, November 15, - December 22, 2013

2014: Marks of Genius: One Hundred Extraordinary Drawings, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

2015: Sondheim Prize Finalists Exhibition, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

2015: Tiwani Contemporary, London, England, April 10. 2015 - May 9, 2015

2015: Baltimore Museum of Art,, Baltimore, MD, June 24 - August 9, 2015

2016: State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, Telfair Museums Jepson Center[18]

2016: State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, , Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

2016: Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI, September 1 - October 9, 2016

2016: Silber Gallery, Goucher College, Towson, MD, June 24 - August 14, 2016

2016: Champagne Life: Saatchi Gallery, London, England, January 13, 2015 - March 9, 2016[11]

In 2017 Ahuja's work was part of a number of exhibitions, including Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions at the Asia Society in New York, which explored work by artists of the South Asian diaspora.[19] State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee also featured Ahuja's work in 2017, along with Shifting: African-American Women Artists and the Power of their Gaze at the University of Maryland's David C. Driskill Center, The Reflection in the Sword of Holofernes at the Galveston Artist Residency in Galveston, Texas, which focused on “speaking your truth in the most direct way you know how.”[20], and State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.

Selected collections

References

  1. 1 2 3 ""Dream Region" by Mequitta Ahuja (2009)". War Baby / Love Child. Retrieved 2014-04-28.
  2. 1 2 3 "Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Feminist Art Base: Mequitta Ahuja". Brooklyn Museum. 2007-06-01. Retrieved 2014-04-28.
  3. ↑ "Usable Pasts: 2009-10 Artists-in-Residence Mequitta Ahuja, Lauren Kelley, and Valerie Piraino - The New Yorker". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  4. 1 2 McGarry, Rachel (2014). Master Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Minneapolis Institute of Art. ISBN 978-0-9893718-4-1.
  5. 1 2 3 "Tress IV, 2008". Minneapolis Institute of Art.
  6. 1 2 3 Wolff, Rachel (2010). "The Key to Her Locks". ART News. 109 (2): 76–77.
  7. ↑ Maura Reilly; Linda Nochlin, eds. (2007). Global feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (1st ed.). New York: Merrell. ISBN 978-1858943909.
  8. ↑ Laura Kinn; Wei Ming Dariotis; Kent A. Ono, eds. (2013). War baby/love child : Mixed Race Asian American Art. Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0295992259.
  9. ↑ "2011 Biennial Awards | The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation". louiscomforttiffanyfoundation.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
  10. ↑ Foundation, Joan Mitchell. "Joan Mitchell Foundation » Artist Programs » Artist Grants". joanmitchellfoundation.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
  11. ↑ Callahan, Maura. "Sondheim Finalists 2015: Mequitta Ahuja's allegorical oil paintings reference art history's canon and reclaim the artist's agency". citypaper.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  12. ↑ State of the Art Discovering American Art Now (Card Book Box Set)|format= requires |url= (help). Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. 2014.
  13. ↑ "5 Questions with Mequitta Ahuja - ELEPHANT". ELEPHANT. 2016-02-29. Retrieved 2017-03-08.
  14. ↑ Villarreal, Ignacio. "Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin's Premier Contemporary Art Center, Reopened to the Public". artdaily.com. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  15. ↑ "Summer-Fall 2010: Usable Pasts: 2009-10 Artists in Residence: Mequitta Ahuj...: EBSCOhost". web.b.ebscohost.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  16. ↑ "Drawing on the Edge | National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution". npg.si.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  17. ↑ "State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now – Telfair Museums". www.telfair.org. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  18. ↑ "What Does It Mean to Make Art in the South Asian Diaspora?". Hyperallergic. 2017-08-04. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
  19. ↑ "The Reflection in the Sword of Holofernes | Glasstire". Glasstire | Texas Visual Art. 2017-02-28. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
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