Padma Rajendran: soft fruits

Soft Fruits

May 6 – 28, 2017

Artist Talk: Saturday, May 6, 2 PM

Reception: Saturday, May 6, 4 – 6 PM

ARTISTS STATEMENT

Wherever one goes or comes from Home remains as a place to have and to work towards. To feel comfort and belonging holds us captive and this sentiment occurs in a specific geography, weather, neighborhood, or simply the physical walls of a house. By exploring hidden and lost rituals, I establish that ritual is the keeper of sentiment and designates boundaries within the home. My work comes from an interior place of living two cultural lives and manifests from digging through the past of personal monuments and archived histories. Gathering personal symbols authenticates something forgotten and resurrects it to be experienced again. It is a path to observe an alternate unfolding of events, offers a new ontology, and presents an “undoing”. My imagery is talking to the ritualistic narratives specific to the house and home, such as preparing food and the textile fragments that make up my shell and shelter. Recollecting these souvenirs, I embrace the woven to create images that instigate psychological elasticity yet are still bound by opposing threads.

2017 Solo Shows were selected by juror Susana Torruella Leval, Director Emerita El Museo del Barrio, Chair of the New York City Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission.