| Hema Upadhyay | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Hema Hirani, changed her name to Hema Upadhyay in 1998. |
| Born | 18 May 1972 Baroda |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Training | Completed her Bachelor's (Painting) and Master's (Printmaking) in Fine Arts from M.S. University, Baroda in 1995 and 1997 respectively. |
Hema Upadhyay (born 1972 in Baroda, India) is an Indian artist who has lived and worked in Mumbai, India since 1998. She uses photography and sculptural installations to explore notions of dislocation and nostalgia.
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Hema had her first solo exhibition, titled Sweet Sweat Memories, at Gallery Chemould, now Chemould Prescott road (Mumbai), in 2001. The exhibition consisted of mixed media on paper works. In these works she has incorporated her own photographs to communicate her ideas of migration having moved to Bombay in 1998. Hema’s paintings are usually characterized by the inclusion of small-collaged photographic self-portraits. Miniaturizing images of herself in various positions, she inserts them into her allegorical landscapes allowing them to interact with the decorative and fictive environments she creates.
Sweet Sweat Memories speak of a sense of alienation and loss and at the same time a feeling of awe and excitement one usually feels when in a new place. The large mixed media on paper works on display were inspired by the suicide of one of her neighbours as well as the confusion that arose in her as a result of living in an urban sprawl where dream and aspirations are both excited and forcefully repressed. The title work in this show encapsulates these feelings perfectly. It is a close up of a mouth, wide and smiling, only to reveal the decay and decadence that lurks everywhere.
In the 2001 Hema had her first international solo at Artspace, Sydney, and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, where She exhibited an installation titled The Nymph and the Adult (also exhibited at the 10th International Triennial - India held in New Delhi) she hand sculpted 2000 lifelike cockroaches, infesting the gallery with them, to draw repulsion as well as fascination from her viewers. The work was intended to make viewers think about the consequences of military actions.
In 2003, she did a collaborative work titled Made in China, which spoke about mass consumerism, globalization and a loss of identity through this. Her next collaboration was in 2006 when she collaborated with her mother, Bina Hirani, the work was titled Mum-my and was shown at the Chicago Cultural Centre.
Hema expanded her language to include installations; from 2004 onwards her installations have been part of various group shows at the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel. MACRO museum, Rome, Italy, IVAM, Valencia, Spain, Mart Museum, Italy, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, Hanger Bicocca, Milan, Italy, Chicago Cultural Centre, Chicago, USA, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, Japan Foundation, Tokyo and the Henie Onstad Kunssenter, Oslo, Norway.
She was the only Indian artist to be part of the inaugural exhibition for the Reopening of the MACRO museum, Rome. The exhibition was curated by Luca Massimi Barbero, Hema exhibited her installation titled Where the bees suck, there suck I.
Hema has also been part of residencies where she has explored displacement related issues with an autobiographical approach. In 2003 she was part of the Vasl residency in Karachi where she made a work titled Loco foco motto (which she later in 2007 exhibited in a group show at the Hanger Bicocca, Milan, Italy) that spoke about the India-Pakistan divide keeping in mind her own family history related to the partition of India. The works were also a break from her trademark symbolism, they were more craft oriented as she used matchsticks and glue to make chandeliers. Constructed of thousands of un-ignited matchsticks assembled into elaborate chandeliers, these pieces embody an important element of Hindu ritual, symbolizing creation and destruction, a trend in her work, which explores violence co-existing with beauty.
In her recent works, Hema introduces an additional layer to the works as a sculptural element. The artist repeatedly utilizes patterned surfaces, which quote from Indian spiritual iconography and traditional textile design. Hema’s marriage of these surfaces with her own image is meant to touch on themes of migration and displacement in South Asia and also reflect upon the existential plight of the artist as solo creator. Her use of shading and her depiction of smoke-like elements give the impression of claws of destruction; the theme is elucidated by the titles, Killing Site.
Dream a wish-wish a dream (2006), was the first large-scale installation that Hema did. At first glance her installation seems to be only a landscape of Bombay; however, it is actually a statement on the changing landscape by migrants who make Bombay.
Hema Upadhyay is represented by