Confronting an emigrant's struggle to belong in a new place, Hema Upadhyay's work narrates her personal and artistic transition to Bombay. Born in Baroda and trained in painting and printmaking there at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Upadhyay shifted to Bombay after completing her education. Having experienced a journey paralleling that of the hordes who arrive in Bombay seeking work each year, the artist became a self-aware agent for the anonymous urban migrant.
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"In an exclusive interview done for www.artconcerns.com, Amrita Gupta Singh focuses on the life and works of the internationally acclaimed artist Hema Upadhyaya. In this candid interview Hema Upadhyaya talks about her being a feminist artist, contexts of her works, international curatorial
issues, market and about migration and memories..."
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Brisvegas, always the bridesmaid never the bride when it comes to art at least, is currently basking in a little cultural glow with the opening of the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art. The Judy opened in Fortitude Valley in late 2001, as a shiny home for the Institute of Modern Art, alongside other arts organizations.
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"BY its very nature, self-portraiture as a genre carries within it the risk of obsessive narcissism. Thus, the self-portraitist could end up exoticising the represented body. This is especially true of the female
self-portrait, which must take its place in a context of female images that are framed and commodified by the dominant male gaze. The danger here is that, in the very act of representing a female
subjectivity, women artists might end up creating an image as exotic as the ones routinely produced by patriarchal culture..."
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