Gunjan Chawla Kumar

Gunjan Chawka Kumar (b. 1980) (she/her) is an India-born, Chicago-based artist, independent scholar, and educator whose research-driven practice draws from archaeological sites, indigenous craft traditions, and prehistoric painting. Trained in Textiles at the National Institute of Design and Technology, New Delhi, she works with natural pigments, handwoven cotton, clay, and earth sediments to create drawings, paintings, and sculptural forms that explore the elemental relationships between matter, time and space. Her work has been exhibited at the South Asia Institute, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, the Donnelley Foundation, the Chicago Artist Coalition, the National College of Arts (Lahore), Art Dubai and the India Art Fair, and she has lectured widely on natural pigments and material histories across cultures.

My observations delve into materials and processes that serve as sensory portraits of life inhibited and bygone. I am a materialist and work with a wide palette of pigments and textiles from around the world. Process in the works is the message. Often a medium is selected, preferably in its elemental form. Next, it is intimately prepared and rendered. As the medium travels through the composition, it informs of its place and role, through the relationships that it builds. Therefore, an unhurried sense of time is an essential part of the process.Influences of indigenous practices, particularly prehistoric cave paintings and related schools of art play an important role in carving my process and ideology