On 17th March at The Conduit Club, 6pm, Stellar International Art Foundation will host a speaker event in celebration of International Women’s Day, with emerging London-based South Asian artist Vasundhara Sellamuthu.
Presenting her latest artworks, Vasundhara will discuss her journey of moving from Chennai to London as a solo young woman in 2007 to pursue higher education in art and design.
At a time at which the market for South Asian artists is rapidly growing, Vasundhara will reflect on how her heritage plays into her work, along with her experiences of research within male-dominated industries such as architecture and construction.
Through an exciting range of media, Vasundhara’s work explores a range of binaries such as East/West, architecture/vernacular, foreign/home dominant/marginal, playfully engaging with her urban environment and its unnoticed makers.
Her recent body of paintings “Some different child” (2021) investigates colourful architecture without architects in the Indian subcontinent and their parallels to the 80s design movement Memphis Group. Her series “Ah! Sign-painter” (2021) inverts popular nicknames of Indian cities such as ‘Kolkata – Asia’s London,’ through the format of transport signage, to consider power dynamics embedded in comparative expressions.
Vasundhara was awarded the Useful and Beautiful commission in 2020, to engage residents in her neighborhood of Walthamstow through creative writing on the theme ‘home and being at home’ during the pandemic. This was presented as a storybox, modelled on a portable Rajasthani shrine at the William Morris Gallery in summer 2021.
Anita Choudhrie, Founder of Stellar International Art Foundation says: “It’s an exciting moment to be hosting our first speaker event in two years and Vasundhara’s work is truly inspiring. The Foundation has long championed artistic talent regardless of background, with previously supported artists including the esteemed Chila Burman, Faiza Butt and Adia Wahid. This latest event is set to be another illustration of our dedication to female cultural expression and exploration.”
Commenting on her practice, Vasundhara says: “By straddling multiple simultaneities, my artworks take on cross-cultural hierarchies embedded in art and architectural canons.”
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