'Surge', 2008
Oil on Canvas, 96inX80in
'Triptych', 2008
Waxy Chalk on Paper, 96inX52in
Drawings, on-going
Colored Pencil on Paper, sizes vary
'I am a woman of mixed ethnic origin, South Asian Indian and African American. My works are self-portraits. On both canvas and paper, my figures command their environments.' Mequitta Ahuja
Mequitta Ahuja describes her drawings and paintings as 'works of Automythography' in which she explores the symbolic significance of blackness and the social implications of Black hair. 'In response to the history of Black hair as a barometer of social and personal consciousness', she says, 'I make the image of hair both corporeal and conceptual, giving it psychic proportions.' Over large canvases she builds up her images with hundreds of small brushstrokes to create an intricately textured surface. This labour-intensive, almost obsessive process draws attention to the highly constructed presentation of the subject's identity and to the ways in which female identitiy can be self-created.
Mequitta, born in 1976, received her MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2003, mentored by Kerry James Marshall. She has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and BravinLee Programs in New York. She has participated in group exhibitions including Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, Houston Collects African American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Poets and Painters at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita KS and upcoming show, Anomalies at Rossi and Rossi Gallery in Piccadilly, London (June 2009). In addition to exhibition catalogues, her work has appeared in Modern Painters, March 2007 and Art News, February 2007, and the New York Times, June 1, 2007.
Mequitta was awarded a 2008 Houston Artadia Prize as well as the 2008 inaugural award of the Meredith and Cornelia Long Prize. Mequitta's works are in notable public and private collections. Public collections include the Ulrich Museum in Wichita KS, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, U.S. State Department's Mumbai, India offices and The Cleveland Children's Clinic.
To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
)
)
)