Yamini Nayar (born 1975) is a visual artist working between New York and Delhi. Her work is part of the collection of the
Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the
Cincinnati Art Museum, the
Saatchi Collection
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Da ...
,
Queensland Art Gallery, the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
, and the US Department of State
Art in Embassies collection.
Education
Nayar received her MFA from the
School of Visual Arts in New York City. and her BFA from the
Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island. Nayar is a recipient of the Lightborne Fellowship, Aaron Siskind Fellowship and an Art Matters Foundation grant.
Works
Nayor creates large-scale photographs from sculptures constructed from found materials. After the construction is documented with a large-format camera, they are destroyed leaving only the photographic evidence.
Her works intersect photography, sculpture and architecture, with projects exploring postcolonial narratives, memory, migration, informal architecture and dwellings, modernist architecture, and alternate and imagined modernities. She has been likened to a "tripped-out version of
Samuel van Hoogstraten"
and also compared to German artist
Thomas Demand.
Nayar's work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
, and Artforum.
Her work has been described both as exhibiting "a painstaking attention to detail" in certain pieces, and in others portraying a "sense of chaos."
Nayar's photographs are as much about the psychological as physical space. Her work explores the "relationship between memory and architecture while establishing a tension between the remembered and the real." Her photographs have been described as providing "a topography of the mind itself."
Nayar's more recent work blends multiple exposures from various stages of construction of a single model. This technique deepens and complicates the piece's relationship with time. The combination is also said to be “reminiscent of Cubism's multi-perspectival dissolution of the static object.”
Selected exhibitions
2020
THREE SPACES for TIME, Thomas Erben, New York
2019
If stone could give, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco
2018
Peckham 24, London
What's essential, Jahaveri Contemporary
Aspirational Architectures, Fridman Galley
2017
Crash, Dig, Dwell, Jahaveri Contemporary
Archival Alchemy, Abrons Arts Center
2016
Unsuspending Disbelief, Logan Center Gallery
2015
Constructs/Construction,
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is a private modern and contemporary art museum with locations in New Delhi and Noida. Established in 2010, it is India's first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The core collection of ...
A Room of One's Own, Yancy Richardson
2013
an axe for a wingbone, Thomas Erben, New York
2011
Thomas Erben Gallery, NY
2010
Lightborne Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum and Art Academy of Cincinnati
2011
School of Visual Arts, SVA Notable Female Alumni
Collectors Guide, Volume 2, Chelsea Art Museum
Moving Index, ArtOffice.org
Manual For Treason, Sharjah Biennial
2010
Object Lessons, New York Photography Festival
The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Conspiracy’ with Raqs Media Collective and Susanta Mandal, Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata, India
Hong Kong Art fair, Hong Kong, Japan
Punctum II, Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai, India
31 Women in Art Photography, Humble Arts Foundation
Bring Me A Lion, Webster University, MO
Accented, Bric Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2009
NADA Art Fair, Yamini Nayar, New Works
Thomas Erben Gallery, NY, Arrested Views
Galerie Anne Barrault, France
Grey Noise Gallery, Pakistan, Good Looking
2008
Scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland, By All Means
Stephen Stux Gallery, New York, Firewalkers
Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FA, Exploding the Lotus
Thomas Erben, New York, First Left, Second Right
ExitArt, New York, Spring Auction
2007
ExitArt, New York, Sultana's Dream
Gallerie Barry Keldoulis, Australia, The Devotee Exhausts the Forces of Activity
Rush Arts Gallery, New York – Art for Life Auction – East Hampton Benefit
Queens Museum, New York, Erasing Borders
2006
Bose Pacia Modern, New York ‘Yamini Nayar and Shreshta Premnath’
Onishi Gallery, New York, The Kayu Project
Kiana Malakzadeh Gallery, New York, This One Time
BosePacia (25), New York, Friends of Fulbright India Auction
2005
Queens Museum of Art, New York Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now
Prerana Reddy
Rush Arts Gallery, New York, More or Less, Generation Meaning Through Process
Studio Museum of Harlem, NY hrlm: pictures – video installation;
PH Gallery, New York, Empire's Feast
2004
Gallery Arts India, New York, Territories
PS 122, NY, 'Blow the Conch
2003
Bose Pacia, New York, Through Customs
Rye Center, New York
2002
313 Gallery, New York, Black Tea
Interart Annex, New York, Women in Wartime
Society for Ethical Culture, New York
1999
Woods-Gerry Gallery, RI RISD Graduation Invitational
RISD Red-Eye Gallery, RI, Thesis Exhibition, Detroit
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nayar, Yamani
1975 births
American women artists
School of Visual Arts alumni
Rhode Island School of Design alumni
Living people
21st-century American women
American artists of Indian descent
21st-century Indian women artists