Today we’d like to introduce you to Namita Paul.
Namita, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started my professional life as a fashion designer in India. After moving to the United States, I went back to school and earned degrees in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and Cultural studies from the University of Washington. Currently, I am working on my Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
A circuitous and bumpy road is more like it! As a first-generation immigrant and a woman of color, one is often living in the space of margins. Questions about belonging and identity arise in sharp relief. Feelings of inadequacy, isolation, and self-doubt are never far behind. However, margins also become places of freedom and reinvention, of push and pull, of formation and disintegration.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
This idea of margins as dichotomous places shows up in my dialogue with materials: using garment construction techniques, I work primarily with canvas—raw and gessoed–sequins, mirrors, paint, found fabrics, old paintings, and photo transfers weaving in and out of works. I am interested in pushing materials beyond their comfort zones; how do materials defy their materiality? In my studio, canvas becomes a wall, a window, a door, a nook, the sky, rugged terrain, a tree; sequins become rigid barnacles or distant stars, antithetical to their ontology. This gesture of picking something and altering it in a manner that defies expectations lies at the core of my practice. A reflection, perhaps of my ongoing inner transformation, a constant becoming.
I am most proud of my recent installation called W. M. 265 that was on view at the Root Division gallery in San Francisco as part of a show called ‘you can hear the wind beneath the floorboards,’ curated by San Francisco-based curators Katherine Jemima Hamilton and Shaelyn Hanes. A meditation on memory and a specific architectural space, this interdisciplinary work is made of indigo-dyed canvas, burlap, sequins, acrylic photo transfers, LED lights, and currency. The large-scale structure is made with canvas ‘bricks’ that become the work’s building blocks while speaking to my process of taking something small and making something monumental through gestures of repetition and accretion; the ‘particular’ that becomes the portal to the universal. Three-dimensional nooks and recessed spaces become indexes of specific memories. The work, which started as a personal journey into memory and history has now become a memorial to my ancestors.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Making work, walking my dogs, and watching movies with my family would be on the top of my list. There are other things, of course, but these give me the most joy because they feed my needs for intellectual stimulation, stories, good health, and companionship!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.namitapaul.com
- Instagram: @artistnpaul
Image Credits
Namita Paul Dennis Tyler Nicholas Bruno Mary Campbell
