SHWETA MISTRY

Shweta was born in 1990 and raised in the vivid city of Pune where she currently works in her home studio. She remembers hot summers spent languidly in her mum's hometown; with an appetite for colours and books, staring at her grandfather's hands while they moved on paper as he taught her how to draw.

 

Her art is a monologue of overlapping memories; a tug of war between her mind and her hands that results in a cacophony of layers, where the beginning and the end are indistinguishable. These are moments suspended in time that evoke a contrast: a disassociated act of half-hearted, often incomplete nostalgia, a hunger for hopes and dreams of a faraway place, a mirage of many lives lived, a memory of her voice. 

 

She describes her art as something that lives in the moments of “in between”, expressing the feeling of being caught in the act: an act of chaos, a stillness suspended, frozen in time, and then the control is given up. It fails, but often salvaged in a collage of physical and abstract purpose. 

 

Her influences emerge from the desire to ask questions and find answers to them several times until she feels ‘enough’. And then separate and visit her art again after a time wanting to be amazed by what is revealed. Her art and colours often reflect back to the never ending sky, food memories, emotions, the colours of the local farmers market, mountains visible in the distance of her hometown, relationships, the quiet afternoons she spent in Ueno while studying and living a new culture, fellow artist and art she keeps getting awed by, and time spent being amazed by the universe.

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