SMRITI DIXIT

(1971, Bhopal, India)

AvailableWorks|Biography|PastExhibitions

 

Smriti Dixit has long been committed to processes of recycling in her art, incorporating fabric, found objects, plastic price tags and other elements of the detritus of everyday life into her art-works. She insists in giving visibility to the techniques and processes of women’s work, to labour that has long been rendered invisible in patriarchal systems of production, which remain premised on an artificial division between the home, regarded as domestic (female) space, and the workplace, sacralised as the proper context for (male) work. The cosmic drama of birth, dying and regeneration are performed through her artistic activity and its outcomes, and the space that it occupies and extends even as it extends itself. Smriti’s practice emerges from a full-bodied and sensuous abstraction that extends itself into a variety of media and genres: paintings, ceramics, sculptures, assemblages and installations. Smriti experiments constantly with her materials and her vocabulary, and has the courage to confront a grand failure rather than producing works that shelter behind the safety cordon of mediocrity. Her works could aptly be described as memory traces: they encode the ripping-up  of  paper,  the  plucking  of  yarn  from cloth,  the  chain-stitching  of braids,  the  crossing of threads, the maintenance of knots, the intertwining of plastic price tags.

Dixit’s solo shows include Savage Flowers, 2022; Memory of Red, 2015; Feasting and Fasting, 2012; and Exile from Symmetry, 2007 at Art Musings, Mumbai. Dixit has showcased her work in a solo space at the India Art Fair with Art Musings in 2013 & 2015. Among her international exhibitions are a solo at the Galerie Stephan Witschi, Zürich (2014) and the St Moritz Art Master at the Andrea Robbi Museum (2014). She has received the S H Raza Award for Art (2004) and the Pollock Krasner Grant (2013). She participated in the Bharat Bhavan Biennale (1994, 2016) and her installation, Hibiscus River featured in the 2018 edition of the Serendipity Art Festival in Goa. Dixit’s most iconic work to date is Trap. Here, Dixit continues her investigation of weaving plastic price tags. Mimicking the intricate web of a white spider, Dixit created a series of uneven tunnels. The fragile and seductive quality of the web conflicts with the pernicious undertones of its purpose to ensnare and devour, drawing parallels to the sweet intoxicating trap of consumerism. The work was part of her 2012 exhibition Feasting & Fasting, at Art Musings, where over a period of 20 days, Smriti had created this iconic work. The work drew critical acclaim, and is now a part of the Jaya He GVK New Museum, the Airport Art Project in a site-specific installation. Group Exhibitions with Art Musings include India Art Fair; 2020, ’18,  ’15, ’14, ’13, ’11, ’09; Strange and Sublime Addresses, 2019; The 20th, 2019; Shadows of Water, Steps of Light, 2019; India Art Fair, 2018; The Gallery Collection, 2016; Quarto, 2011; Art on Sunday, 2009. The artist lives and works in Mumbai.