USHA KAR RESIDENCY @ M.A.D.E.
EXHIBITION - ARDDANGOSFA
17.04.23 - 30.04.23
MADE GALLERY is pleased to welcome USHA KAR to Cardiff, for a two week residency in the gallery, beginning on the 17th April, to begin working on a new series of works, with accompanying special events in which she’ll invite interaction with the themes within her new work,exploring her heritage, animism and storytelling.
Accompanying this activity, we’ll have a selection of paintings in display on the long wall gallery, from her recent significant body of work titled ‘Ferocious Grace, which was an exploration of racism encountered in the work place and personally, and the development of her practice ideas of ARTIVISM, which she says ‘Creating an opportunity for listening, reflection and discussion.’
Usha dapur Kar is an emerging artist based in Oxford. Largely self-taught in her early years, she signed up for the locally based Warehouse Art School’s continuing development course and unearthed a passion to create concept driven installations and paintings combining, or moving between, abstraction and representation. Her work was selected on both submissions for the OVADA Seven Counties Open and she has exhibited large scale installations in three WAS shows.
Usha was enthralled as a child by the work of Arthur Rackham. His sprites, faeries and tree spirits ignited the possibility of other life and energies darting around her during walks in her native London, in Epping Forest, or skimming across the water as she floated lazily on the River Lea. In more isolated times there was comfort in the sense that objects may have presence and spirit.
Later visits to her paternal India, with the magical dawn and heady dusk, intensified this sense of possibility. These animistic threads weave through Usha’s practice. Ancient presences emanate their burdens, mangoes leap with their own energy, letters fly with intention, a bowl falls tipped by an unseen force, fingernails creep along like cockroaches, bird-like shapes murmurate. An orange shape asserts itself, retaining its glow against all the odds.
Usha’s intention is to link the deeply personal with the universal, even spiritual. Without being directive, she hopes her work will resonate with the viewer at these levels.
Her work offers a vision some may find serene and accepting and others may find bare, bleak or even post-apocalyptic. But always, with a sense that there are unseen, sanguine, comforting possibilities brushing past, quietly germinating, or wildly dancing around us.
'Ferocious Grace'
The intention of her first solo show in Oxford titled "Ferocious Grace" Usha Dapur Kar is to communicate the profound impact of institutional racism in the workplace on a woman of colour.
We will be showing a selection of around half of the original installation of 30 paintings through which Usha explored the specific dissonance experienced when this occurs in the not-for-profit sector.
She looks through the dual prism of a prolonged and intense episode of racism in her personal lived experience, framing the period when her mother died during lockdown, and COCo’s research on the topic (summarized in a diagram The “Problem” Woman of Colour in the Workplace).
Reflection on these particular events led Usha to interrogate, reconsider and reinterpret much of her previous working life, indeed, to revisit relationships outside of the workplace.
Working in a supportive community arts setting where the power of art as a tool for communication and dialogue was manifest energised her to progress with this series.
Her paintings use repeated motifs to narrate painful experiences and complex emotions that are by no means unique or obsolete: people of colour of all ages have recounted their similar experiences.
Usha presents this intersectional feminist work as Artivism, creating an opportunity for listening, reflection and discussion – an intention to deepen understanding, raise awareness and inform action. Ultimately, she presents a challenge to numerous not-for-profit institutions: to respond with extended humility, care and attention, to embrace feedback, and to mature beyond defensiveness, dry legalese and policy responses. In short, to change.
Ferocious Grace signals the immense inner strength required to survive and flourish in the face of such experiences. The embedded myth of endless resilience. This is about touching the bottom, learning – in the darkness – to grow, to draw on the gifts of ancestry and self-knowledge, until, eventually, the light flows back in.
Usha Dapur Kar - End of Residency & Sharing Event with Warli Workshop
On the final day of her residency at MADE, come and meet Usha Dapur Kar who will be speaking informally about her experiences and learning during her two week residency in the gallery space at Cardiff MADE.
She'll also be sharing how the Cardiff community's painting was inspired by Warli tribal painting from India. You are invited to participate with your own fun mini art piece - all materials provided. People of all ages and ability are welcome to this free event.
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