Naphisabiang Khongwir

 

 

 

1996, Shillong, Meghalaya, India

 

Naphisabiang Khongwir completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, V.B.U in 2019 and is completing her Masters of Visual Arts in Creative Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda in 2021. She is an artist in residency for Lawei: A Home for Art, under the aegis of the Ateliers Programme (2021-22) by the Government of Meghalaya. Her work received the weekly prize by Artdemic, a Gujral Foundation Initiative (July, 2021). She was part of an online VR group exhibition, Untitled-IX by Priyasri Art Gallery (March to May, 2021) and appeared as a panellist on the topic ‘Art in Khasi Culture’ on Doordarshan Meghalaya (April, 2021). 

 

 

Through re-examining popular children’s stories, Khasi folk and urban narratives, Naphisabiang comments on social norms and situations, addressing issues of violence; in the body, around it and in nature. Themes of mortality, passage and impermanence are explored through addressing the effects of humans on the environment and the complicated relationship we have with it. 

 Issues with identity are addressed through the use of the Scottish Tartan plaid as a pictorial trope, a device to extent the constructed image of a people and as a metaphor for the haunting remnants of a colonizer as it goes to show how far the material and cultural consequences of colonialism can go. 

Her recurring subjects are women and children, as she subverts society’s abstract myth about proper childlikeness or femininity and presents to us an image truer to the experience of both these subjects. Society’s imposition of roles on both, are shown as contradicting as they are expected to hold their place despite being stripped away of their right of being children or women.

 

 

Contact Details: 

Telephone: +91 7005619293

Email: naphisabiangk@gmail.com

Instagram: Naphisabiang Khongwir

Facebook: Naphisabiang Khongwir