Fine Arts Artist: Pratima Naithani
Pratima Naithani is an American contemporary artist of El Salvadorian and Indian background. At the heart of Ms. Naithani's artistic research is a blend of India's cultural past with its present. She brings a rarely before seen representation of India to a western audience but also brings a certain nostalgia to her audience in the East. This conversation makes her one of the more emotionally charged artists.
"The techniques I apply are traditional, a mixture of hand made stencils, silk-screen, wood, collage, painting, drawing, etc. Depending on the nature of the series, I also use photography, which are chemically reworked by hand in order to add another visual dimension to my artworks. Each artwork is transformed by altering the original context to completely reinterpret and reconstruct a minimalist narrative. At the heart of my artistic research is a blend of India's cultural past with its present. I think of my art as alternating notions of time and space by pairing archaic refinement with modern austerity."
Career (www.pratimanaithani.com): Pratima graduated from the prestigious School of Visual Arts in New York in 2003 and her artwork was immediately selected for the Visionaire 41/World Issue in 2003 alongside Karl Lagerfeld, Baz Luhrmann,and others. She most recently Dance Festival of India, (www.dfi08.org), has commissioned Ms. Naithani to create by hand mixed media artworks. Some of Ms. Naithani's group shows include Engendered held at Lincoln Center, Erasing Borders 2008, the exhibition Fatal Love held at the Queens Museum presented by the Asia Society in 2005. Following that, Ms. Naithani spent much of her time in Mumbai preparing for her first solo exhibition which traveled to two influential art galleries specializing in Indian art: the Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi and the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. As well as a solo exhibition of her work at the Miami Art Basel in December, hosted by Rolls Royce. Other accomplishments include her artwork's selection for benefit auctions and multiple group exhibits.
Personal: As a child, Pratima suffered from a serious eye problem which went undiagnosed until she was thirteen. Before it was corrected, Pratima expressed herself through the medium she could most easily perceive: music. A passion for the piano led Pratima to play by ear without learning how to read music. Her skills accelerated with incredible speed and she quickly became a classical and jazz pianist. Though she fostered a continued interest in music, Pratima discovered art by happenstance at boarding school. Her innate abilities and apparent talent eventually led her to the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Pratima travels extensively, splitting the majority of her time between New York and India, but also taking every opportunity to absorb the cultures of many other destinations. This unmoored artist is an expert at pop culture trivia and a persistent contributor to charitable organizations.