Indigo Blue Art (IBA) is pleased to present <CONNECTIONS>, Madhvi Subrahmanian’s first solo exhibition in Singapore. The exhibition showcases about 10 wall installations and six freestanding installations in ceramics.
Born in Mumbai, India and now based in Singapore, Madhvi has lived on three continents and in four countries over the last two decades. Central to the artist’s practice is an exploration of various cultures and experiences she has been exposed to, and how she has adapted to and been transformed by the challenges brought on by new circumstances.
The title of this exhibition, <Connections>, refers to the links between her myriad life experiences. Drawing parallels between seemingly disparate thoughts, such as the seedpod and the road sign, the artist uses her imaginative abstract objects as metaphors to help her navigate her journey. Madhvi’s sensitive organic forms are derived from seedpods with direct and often obvious road references connecting the ancient with the modern. Her installations investigate the association as well as discordance between nomadic wanderings and urban settling opening up the work to multiple references from fertility to migration and movement. As Madhvi puts it “for me the forms are a meeting ground where the primal connects with the contemporary, the geometric with the organic and the ephemeral with the everlasting”. In the installation, titled Social Network one sees an active network linking various primeval looking organic seed/disc like forms overlaid with geometric arrows and road marks in various directions. The forms are connected to each other using the sacred Indian thread representing multiple and everlasting relationships of one to the other.
Exploring Madhvi Subrahmanian’s work is an enriching experience. In the recent issue of Ceramic Art and Perception, Sharbani Das Gupta says it well “In Madhvi’s art, germination happens in the fertile soil of the mind, ideas grow like plants, and connections branch out like trees. There are many fruits, many roots, and a forest to explore”.
About the Artist
Madhvi Subrahmanian has been working with ceramics for over two decades. Trained initially in Pondicherry, India at the Golden Bridge Pottery with Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith, she received her Masters in Fine Arts in Ceramics from Meadows School of the Arts SMU, Dallas, Texas, in the United States.
Madhvi is well known for her smoke fired forms and her works have been published in several international magazines and two recent books: “Smoke firing” by Jane Perryman and “Contemporary Ceramics” by Emmanuel Cooper. She has had several solo and group shows in countries including India, USA, Spain, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. Her works are part of several private collections in India and abroad.
