Mequitta Ahuja

Education

She received her Bachelor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1998, and her Master of Fine Arts at University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003, where she was mentored by contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall.

Career

In 2007, in Ahuja"s debut exhibition in New York city, New York Times art critic Holland Cotter said of Ahuja"s work, "Referring to the artist"s African-American and East Indian background, the pictures turn marginality into a regal condition". Ahuja"s art explores the social construction of issues such as race, gender, and identity through a technique of self-portraiture that she calls "automythography", a term borrowed from African American feminist Audre Lorde"s "biomythography". Through automythography, Ahuja blends historical, autobiographical, and mythological elements together in what she describes as a "process of identity formation in which nature, culture, and self-invention merge".

Her art tends to feature vast landscapes in an abstract style, frequently depicting the artist in the costume of warriors, goddesses, and other fantastical beings.

To create her paintings, Ahuja relies on a three-step process that involves performance, photography, and drawing/painting. Ahuja begins by developing a series of performances involving costumes, props, and poses.

With the aid of a remote shutter, she then photographs her performances and documents them as "non-fictional source material." Finally, she incorporates these photographs into her invented material, resulting in her completed self-portraits. Ahuja has discussed her paintings as being feminist, referring to the assertive, self-sufficient female presence prevalent in her work, and frequently turns to her African American and Asian Indian roots in her consideration of identity issues.

She states that through her art, "I feel I can have relationships to these groups on my own terms".

In 2007, Ahuja was included in the exhibition Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and in 2009 her painting "Dream Region" was featured as the cover of the book War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art in which the artist was featured. In 2010, Ahuja was profiled as the "Artist to Watch" in the February edition of ArtNews. She articulated her own artistic style as "Of primary concern to me is the agency we have to self-invent and self-represent.. creative processes that are necessarily bricolage.

We draw on personal and cultural history as well as our creative imaginations".

In her projects "Autocartography I" and "Rhyme Sequence: Wiggle Waggle", the pictorial styles of the paintings are cross-cultural as well as autobiographical. 2012-2013:

Portraiture Now: Drawing on the Edge in Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

2014:

Marks of Genius: One Hundred Extraordinary Drawings in Minneapolis institute of Arts

2016:

State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now in Telfair Museums Jepson Center

State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now in Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Champagne Life in Saatchi Gallery in London United Kingdom.

Achievements

• Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, India and Dubai, and she has been the recipient of multiple awards for her art, including the Tiffany Foundation Award in 2007, a 2009 Joan Mitchell Award, and a 2008 Houston Artadia Prize. 2015: Baltimore Museum of Art in Sondheim Prize Finalists Exhibition.