EMERGING ARTIST AWARD 2009 | HEMALI BHUTA

Hemali Bhuta views her work as an exercise that starts with the dilemma between ‘to be’ and ‘to become’, thus taking an anarchic position of questioning the quest for existence. As a multi-media artist her works exist in two forms - as the object and as the documentation/archive. Her choice of materials itself is a contradiction; they are perishable, impermanent and ephemeral, thus requiring another medium to document and archive the materiality of the work. This allows Bhuta to lay emphasis on the pre and post phases of the work, on the process of production (leading up to the work) and the archival evidence (an after life to the work) which is integral to her practice.

Bhuta (b. 1978) has completed her MVA in Painting from the M.S. University of Baroda and her GD Art from the L.S. Raheja School of Art, Mumbai. She is the recipient of the Nasreen Mohamedi 2008-2009 scholarship.