This week we welcome Mesma Belsaré, a visual artist and dancer born in India and based in the New York area. Her childhood artistic explorations led her to quit medical school and attend Delhi College of Art in New Delhi, and thereafter Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Massachusetts. She served as a museum educator at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and thereafter as the director of education at MassArt Art Museum, in Boston. Belsaré’s paintings are held in private collections in the U.S., India, Canada, Britain, Holland, and France. She has exhibited at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston; the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto; Montclair Art Museum in NJ; Baruch College in New York City, andDelhi College of Art inNew Delhi, among others.
Mesma Belsaré is also a dance artist. She was described by The New York Times as “a tour de force…a true act of transcendence and religious immersion.“ Her work speaks towards creating and occupying space for and by South Asian gender-non-conforming voices in dance. Other publications to review Belsaré’s work are: The Ballet Review, Toronto Star, Hindustan Times, Times of India, The Hindu and The Boston Globe. She is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including the Dance/USA 2022-23 Fellowship, the 2024 Individual Artist Fellowship by the New Jersey Council on the Arts, and a Cambridge Arts Council grant.
“Myth, Metaphor and Migration are running themes in my art. I have lived and worked in two separate continents. My home is my studio. Negotiating geographical boundaries and corporeal transition inspired me to explore diverse artistic genres, techniques and modes of expression. My work today is an attempt to find my moorings in a socially and culturally turbulent world. It has made me aware of the transience of physical forms, and the fragility of human systems and establishments,” she writes.
“Childhood memories of rituals honoring nature, studies of ancient temple sculptures, architecture and cave paintings, along with the grand narratives of my ancestors, all come to roost on my canvas. An anachronism in our times of “insta-art”, the old masters’ techniques of grisaille and glazing in tempera and oil still excite me to speak in my personal style. My figures, deeply rooted in mythical stories and memories of my ancestors, have over time derived inspiration from Byzantine icons and pre-Renaissance European masters.”
See more of Belsaré’s work on her website and Instagram
Read more of our artist profiles here.
