Shrine Empire Gallery » Neerja Kothari

Bio CV Exhibitions

gesture, by the healing vibrations of the singing bowls (15636)
gesture, by the last vibration of the singing bowls (6352)
Manuscript for the Book of Time – Subset 1 – 21 days
one slow moving gesture of 11 minutes
silent gestures, once the music stops
this mark repeatedly (163100)
this mark repeatedly (16312)
this mark repeatedly (31500)
this mark repeatedly (45310)
this mark repeatedly (46222)
this mark repeatedly (50100)
this mark repeatedly (61673)
this mark repeatedly (62700)
this mark repeatedly (66309)
this mark repeatedly (68300)
to the beats of 10s and 11s
to the notes of 10s and 11s
to the notes of 10s and 11s (I)
to the notes of 10s and 11s (II)
to the score of 10s and 11s
Breathe. Release (32503)
Anxiety / droplets (336400)
Breathe. Release (74300)
6hr 5min (10550)
Prescribed Drawing 5
Prescribed Drawing 4
Prescribed Drawing 3
Prescribed Drawing 2
Prescribed Drawing 1
starstuff on my fingertips
Stardust (39000)
Stardust (54200)
800 (40:17:3)
1255 (53:14:2)
3502
10612
7026
8281
7400
Murmuration (# 5) at 4600, 5000, 6500 & 5500
Murmuration (# 2) at 51,900
Murmuration (# 1) at 1,24,800
Stuck in Minute Johnson Vermont
In Fear of Losing Color
Gathering Evidence on One’s Trace (5900)
Coming Apart (1765)
Ode to a False Stance
Each Sameness Carrying its Own Difference (4290 to 1)
Charting the Evening Sky 1 to 43300
Adrift at 9,405
Metamorphosis (movement 2) – 20620
Holding on to Elements in Blue
Holding onto 1,30,022 Circles of Blue
Untitled (Heel and Toe)
Holding onto 1,06,900 Lines of Blue
An Investigation of a Lyrical Movement by the Self (80330)
Trepid Traces (6750)

Education

2013 Master of Fine Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University, USA
2011 Studio Diploma Certificate Program, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
2010 Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Fine Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts,  Boston, USA
2002 Bachelor of Commerce (Honors), Calcutta University, Kolkata, India 

Exhibitions

2021 Keeping Score, Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi, India
Hub India at Artissima, Turin, Italy
Classical Radical – Multitudes & Assemblages, Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin, Italy
Delhi Contemporary Art Week, New Delhi, India

2020 InTouch Edition 4 (online exhibition)
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India

2019 India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
Delhi Contemporary Art Weekend, New Delhi, India

2018 Caressing History, Prameya Art Foundation, Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi, India 
Lapses II, Sakshi Gallery and Shrine Empire Gallery, Mumbai, India 
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India 
Delhi Contemporary Art Weekend, New Delhi

2017 Delhi Contemporary Art Weekend, SaffronArt, New Delhi, India 
Lapses, Shrine Empire Gallery at The Harrington Street Art Center, Kolkata, 
India Art Fair, New Delhi, India

2016 India Art Fair, New Delhi, India

2013 Drawing Connections:23rd Drawing Show, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, en(countering) impossibilities, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Fourth Wall Gallery,Boston,MA 
Graduating Students + Award Recipients, Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery, SMFA,MA  
Deciphering Identity, Jewett Art Gallery, Wellesley College, MA 
Pieces Apart: Quantifying Experience, Huret & Spector Gallery, Boston, MA

2012 Museum School Art Sale, SMFA, Boston, MA 
Summer Camp, Mission Hill Gallery, SMFA, Boston, MA 
Invited to assist as a drafter for the Sol LeWitt Wall drawing #118, Something along those l. lines, Grossman Gallery, SMFA, Boston, MA
Museum Council Summer Party Juried Auction, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 
SMFA Medal Award Gala and Juried Auction, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 
Proof of Purchase, Samson Projects Gallery, Boston, MA 
Violence Transformed 2012: The Artist’s Voice, Resnikoff Gallery, Boston,MA 
Annual Juried Drawing Show, SMFA, Boston, MA 
SMFA graduate open studios, SMFA, Boston, MA

2011 Annual Juried Drawing Show, SMFA, Boston, MA 
Student Annual Photo Show, SMFA, Boston, MA

2010 Proof of Purchase, Samson Projects Gallery, Boston, MA 
December Sale, SMFA, Boston, MA 
Post-Baccalaureate Spring Group Show, SMFA, Boston, MA 
All School Juried Drawing Show, SMFA, Boston, MA 
Student Annual Show, SMFA , Boston, MA

Residencies

2016 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, New Mexico
The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York

2015 La Napoule Art Foundation, France

2014 The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia (Jane Geuting Camp Fund Fellowship)

2013 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont

Awards/Nominations

2017 Aparajita You Shine Art award, Kolkata, India

2016 FID Prize (Nominee)

2013 Montague International Travel Grant
Nominated (Finalist) for Blance E Colman Award, Boston
Dana Pond Award in Painting (Honorable mention) SMFA, Boston

2011 Scholarship, MFA Program, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Award winner, Annual Juried Drawing Show, SMFA, Boston
Scholarship, Post-Baccalaureate Program, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Neerja Kothari (b.1980, Kolkata) is an artist currently living and working from Kolkata, India. She holds a B.Com from Calcutta University, India and a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University, USA. She has been awarded fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center and the La Napoule Art Foundation.

Her work has also been published in the New American Paintings (NE#110) journal and the Manifest International Drawing Annual INDA8

Neerja’s work deals with the investigation of the absurd. It’s an attempt at trying to quantify an unquantifiable experience. This is inspired by the time spent in physical rehabilitation recovering from motor sensory neuropathy. Every movement that the brain forgot had to be relearned. The process was slow and fragmented. Every movement was broken down to its smallest bit. And then bit by bit the bigger ideas were formulated. The work then emerges as an investigation of larger existential questions.

Derived from multiple instances and memories the work becomes an accumulation of time, labor, process, memories, marks and numbers. Each factor playing a part in its own investigation: Like a clock may think it quantifies time, or a metronome might want to quantify music. Often easily read as a case of obsessive compulsive, Neerja likes to emphasize the absolute necessity of the process. The brain forgot things learned in the first score years and she had to retune the muscle memory to a very instructional rhythm. The distilled-down instructional methodology in the work then reiterates that process of re building and re tuning and re learning.

Increasingly now she finds that the absurdity and futility of the work is really important. As is the notion of being trapped in other’s oddities and other’s absurdities. These other’s oddities that also made her. Therefore the work is at a point where a lived experience is being translated, explored and represented. There is a struggle to find that mode of representation, a search for a new code or new language or just simply an ongoing narrative : Of the quantifying and the unquantifiable; The emotional memories in contrast to the muscle memory that had to be restored. A constant going on. A constant exploration and investigation into anything and nothing and everything. As Beckett writes in his novel Unnamable:
For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I’ll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time.