Gauri Gill
Born in Chandigarh, 1970 and lives in New Delhi, India
Gauri Gill earned a BFA (Applied Art) from the College of Art, New Delhi, BFA (Photography) from Parsons School of Design in NYC, and MFA (Art) from Stanford University in California. Her practice is complex because it contains several lines of pursuit. These include an almost two decade long engagement with marginalised communities in rural Rajasthan called Notes from the Desert—this ongoing archive contains series such as The Mark on the Wall, Traces, Jannat, Balika Mela, Birth Series and Ruined Rainbow. She has explored human displacement and the immigrant experience The Americans and What Remains. Projects such as the 1984 notebooks highlight her sustained belief in collaboration and ‘active listening’, and in using photography as a memory practice. Her most recent series, Fields of Sight, is an equal collaboration with a renowned Adivasi artist, combining the contemporary language of photography with the ancient one of Warli drawing to co-create new narratives. Working in both black and white and colour, Gill’s work addresses the twinned Indian identity markers of class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour. In her work, there is empathy, surprise, and a human concern over issues of survival.
Para Site