Master Monday: Hema Upadhyay

Hema Upadhyay was an Indian artist known for her photographs, intricate paintings, and mixed-media installations that reflected the cityscapes and identity of her native country.

She earned both her BFA and MFA from the University of Baroda in 1995 and 1997.

Fish in a dead landscape, 2014

She was known for seamlessly linking personal trauma with environmental and human crises to evocative effect.

In 2001 Hema had her first international solo at Artspace, Sydney, and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, where she exhibited an installation titled The Nymph and the Adult.

She hand sculpted 2000 lifelike cockroaches, infesting the gallery with them.

In 2003 she was part of the Vasl residency in Karachi where she made a work titled Loco foco motto that spoke about the India-Pakistan divide keeping in mind her own family history related to the partition of India.

Dream a wish-wish a dream (2006) was the first large-scale installation, at first glance her installation seems to be only a landscape of Bombay.

In collaboration with Chintan Upadhyay, she did a work titled ‘Made in China’, which spoke about mass consumerism, globalization and a loss of identity through this.

Her next collaboration was in 2006 when she collaborated with her mother, Bina Hirani, the work was titled Mum-my and was shown at the Chicago Cultural Centre.

In 2010, Hema was invited to a residency at Atelier Calder, Sache, France.

“So much chaos in my work actually came from the city, when I work in my studio in Mumbai, there are lots of elements, of decay, of life, of chaos. It’s a double-edged condition when you see development in the making—you see growth but decay.”

Her later works featured patterned surfaces, which quote from Indian spiritual iconography and traditional textile design, titled ‘Killing Site’

Uphadhyay crafted narratives from found materials to explore themes of gender, migration, socioeconomics, and urban development.

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