Investigating displacement in psychological spaces
This week we welcome Preeti Varma, a Manhattan-based visual artist originally from New Delhi who has also worked in Mumbai, Bangalore and Singapore. Varma’s history of navigating disparate geographies inspires her investigations into the fluidity of physical and psychological space that such displacements cause.
Varma earned a bachelor of arts degree with honors from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2014. In 2015, she relocated to New York to further her studio practice, enrolling in the Art Students League of New York. Her work there was recognized with the Kuniyoshi Award for painting and the John M. Regan Jr. Scholarship for mixed media. In 2009, she transitioned to a full-time professional art practice.
Since 2011, Varma’s work has been showcased in exhibitions and international art fairs across the U.S. and Singapore. Noteworthy highlights include her first NYC solo show in 2017 and two subsequent solo exhibitions. Her work has also been featured at Art on Paper 2019 (New York City), the Texas Contemporary Art Fair 2018 (Houston), the LA Art Show 2018 and the Affordable Art Fair Singapore (2015). Varma’s work is held in private collections across the United States and internationally.
In Varma’s words: “My work explores how migration, displacement and shifting cultural identities shape our experience of space, memory and belonging. Having lived and worked across multiple geographies over the past 25 years, I am interested in how movement between places becomes internalized as perception, emotional landscape and a constantly evolving sense of home, what I think of as a perpetual state of arrival.
“I work across painting and mixed media to investigate these layered conditions. In my paintings, using oil, oil stick and oil pastel, forms accumulate, dissolve and reconfigure across the canvas, creating environments where organic, architectural and mechanical elements merge. Through processes of layering, interruption and erasure, the compositions evolve into shifting spatial systems that hover between landscape, structure and organism. These configurations engage with the friction that emerges in cities shaped by migration and the inequity of visibility.
“My mixed-media works draw from close observation of the urban environment. Combining photography with wax on delicate rice paper, I trace overlooked fragments of the built landscape: temporary repairs, worn surfaces and infrastructural traces that function as material witnesses to the movement of people through the city. Through layering and abstraction, these works transform ordinary urban observations into tactile records of environments shaped by movement and adaptation. Ultimately, these works examine the city as a layered terrain where memory and identity are continually negotiated.”
See more of Varma’s work on her website and Instagram. Her upcoming exhibition opens Saturday, March 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Lorimoto Gallery in Ridgewood, Queens.
