As the art world mourns the untimely death of Hema Upadhyay, art galleries in the country remember her contribution to the field
Acclaimed artist Hema Upadhyaya passed away on Dec 12 2015. Upadhyay’s last work waas a commissioned project for Sunaparanta’s Sensorium festival in Goa. Sensorium extends heartfelt condolence to her family at this difficult hour.
Born in 1972, Hema Upadhyay moved to Mumbai after completing her MFA in printmaking and BFA in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. Upon experiencing the shift to the city, she was inspired to make artworks which spoke about the culture and dynamics of Mumbai as a metropolis. What particularly interested her were the issues of migration, dislocation, and imagining herself amongst many others who came to the city looking to find a place for themselves. She always paid attention to the details, to the miniscule and to the ordinary, and created art which could talk of the self in a larger social-cultural context. Hema’s work reflected on the transience of materials, and were largely narrative and autobiographical.
Her last pieces of art were a commissioned project for Sunaparanta’s Sensorium festival in Goa. “Perhaps it’s true — in the end what endures is the work. When we commissioned Hema Upadhya, via her gallerist Roshini Vadehra, to create a new work for Sensorium we had no idea it would also be one of the last things she would shape with her talented hands. The work features rice grains with minute hand lettering; the rice is patterned to make the outline of a man and a woman’s face; there are two frames. The words speak of love, and its faltering, the sort of conversation lovers might have with to figure why things did not work out. I believe her work responds to the idea that love has a greater failure rate than success but our ability to love again is a testament that we are not defeated by our defeat. Just as love does not fade with the retreat of a lover, an artist’s work has endurance transcendent of mortality,” Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, honorary director, Sensorium.
“Tania Dasgupta approached us to launch the book she made for her husband, the late Prabuddha Dasgupta. For this we created a shrine with doves, pomegranates, coral and ginger blossoms. In the shrine we put the books, the photographs in the pages of this book, almost an altarpiece. After making this we had paused to gaze at the fine works of Upadhyay installed in the next room. It was not yet a shrine — who might have knownIJ — but it had a great quietness to it, life reproaching love for its conceit, and language reconciled with that silence is somehow how we shall now speak with the ones we tried to love most. In the final analysis everything is forgotten, except love and art,” added Isheta Salgaocar, executive producer, Sensorium.
Her first solo show was, Sweet Sweat Memories, at Gallery Chemould, Mumbai in 2001. In 2007, her solo show, The Glass House was shown at the Vadehra Art Gallery in london. “In fact Vadehra Art Gallery facilitated her solo exhibition, Universe Revolves On at Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI), Singapore, in 2008 and Extra Ordinary, a solo show of her works at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi in 2012. There were many other group shows at the gallery, that she was a part of. Most recently, her work was shown at Excavation/Eruption, a group show curated by Yashodhara Dalmia at Vadehra Art Gallery in February, 2015,” said a spokesperson from the gallery.
Her work has been shown at various important museums and centers of art around the world such as the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI), Singapore; National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; The Japan Foundation Forum, Tokyo; Vasl International Artists Residency, Karachi; The Zimmerly Art Museum, New Jersey; Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; Studio la Citta, Verona, Italy, et al.
Hema challenged the notion of material and medium by continuously experimenting and extending it to newer forms. Using photography, sculpture, installations and painting she had the ability and understanding to engage with the possibilities of the particular mediums, adding value and strength through her thought-driven process.