Anoushka Bhalla
1997, Vadodara, Gujarat, India
Anoushka is an artist and writer from Vadodara, Gujarat. She completed her Bachelor’s and Masters’s in Visual Arts from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She is currently pursuing her second postgraduate degree at the School of Visual Arts, New York City on a scholarship. She was also offered scholarships by the Parsons New School and Maryland Institute College of Art.
She recently received a grant from the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation and her works are on display at the Kochi-Muziris Student Biennale 2021. In 2020 she was selected from a pool of nationwide contestants as a young critic for the Mumbai Film Festival and has been under the mentorship of The Hindu’s Deputy Editor Emeritus, Baradwaj Rangan, and writers from The Guardian. She has also been a resident at Space Studio, Vadodara under the mentorship of Veeranganakumari Solanki, and has trained at the Chhap Studio, Vadodara in Printmaking.
During the final year of her Bachelors’s, she was awarded the Girish Bhatt Award and Scholarship by the University for her annual display. She has also assisted the direction of the film ‘Cheers’ which became the official selection of the Jaipur International Film Festival and was acquired by Disney+Hotstar. Anoushka has participated in six national and international group exhibitions including those at Space Studio, Vadodara, and her alma mater, M.S.U, Baroda. She has also spoken on Indian cinema at various forums and attended numerous art and writing workshops at the Serendipity Arts Festival, Eka Cultural Resources, and the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.
Anoushka lives and works in New York City.
Anoushka’s works explore ‘The human condition and the anxieties at the heart of the human experience. She engages with art-making as a form of introspection and catharsis, often alternating between the two. She introspects on the nature of grief and violence, time and decay, life and death, and the sensuousness of the human flesh but mostly her practice reflects on the nature of trauma. Previously studying to be a medical surgeon, the spectacle of surgery and the sight of cadavers often led her to introspect on the essence of death. Her works are thus a purgation from the strict stoicism instilled within her by the profession.
Her oeuvre encompasses renditions of the human body and two-dimensional and three-dimensional works, all characterized by the rough, violent treatment of the medium. Her drawings, having roots in mark-making and primitivism, are defined by furious strokes and a raw style of rendering whereas her installations are largely symbolic and thus enforce the spirit of existential philosophies. Her creative process channels across diverse media like fine art, film, and writing; And likewise her practice arises from the literary, the philosophical, the personal, the political, and the institutional.
Anoushka’s art-making is thus a humanist endeavor born out of existential expressions of individual and collective afflictions, of histories of institutional violence, of her ablution from a nihilist medical past, and of the intersections between individual and collective memories- All contributing to the larger discourse around trauma, decay, and death in her practice.
Contact Details:
Telephone: +91-997.890.8167
Email: anoushka.bhalla@gmail.com
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