Shrine Empire Gallery » Neerja Kothari

Bio CV Exhibitions

Breathe. Release (32503)
Anxiety / droplets (336400)
Breathe. Release (74300)
6hr 5 min
Prescribed Drawing 5
Prescribed Drawing 4
Prescribed Drawing 3
Prescribed Drawing 2
Prescribed Drawing 1
Star Stuff 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 Artist in

Exhibitions

2020
Keeping Score (upcoming)
India Art Fair, 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, MA
en(countering) impossibilities, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Fourth Wall Gallery,Boston,MA
Graduating Students + Award Recipients, Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery, SMFA, Boston, 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 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

Residence
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

Bibliography

2017 The strange ways of memory, Soumitra Das, Telegraph Kolkata, India
https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170603/jsp/opinion/story_154794.jsp
2016 The tiny dancer, Melissa Woods, PEM Connected, MA
http://connected.pem.org/tiny-dancer/
2014  365artists365days project, featured artist, December 6 2014
New American Paintings #110 NE
Manifest International Drawing Annual INDA 8

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 find 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.