Divya Mehra | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1981 (age 42–43) Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada |
| Education | Columbia University, University of Manitoba |
| Known for | Multimedia artist |
| Website | divyamehra.com |
Divya Mehra (born 1981) is a Canadian artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. [1] [2] Mehra was awarded the 2019 Wanda Koop Research Fund. [3] She received the Sobey Art Award, presented annually by the National Gallery of Canada, in 2022. [4]
Mehra was born Winnipeg, Canada, the second youngest of four children. She received her BFA (Honours) in Visual Arts from the University of Manitoba School of Art in Winnipeg in 2005 [5] and her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City in 2008. [6]
Mehra works in a multitude of forms, including sculpture, print, drawing, artist books, installation, advertising, performance, video and film. [7] She often uses humour as an entry to her work. [8] By pairing research and popular culture — including comics and social media — with her experience as an artist within the Indian diaspora, she creates works meant to be provocative yet humorous. [9] [10]
Mehra is known in part for her text-based works. One of her first of such works, Currently Fashionable, was created in 2009 and shown as a part of her exhibition, You have to tell them, I'm not a Racist first presented in 2012 at La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, in St. Boniface, Manitoba, and again in 2017 at Georgia Scherman Projects in Toronto. The text works appear in English, Hindi and French.[ citation needed ]
In 2012 Mehra was one of ten artists commissioned by MTV, MoMA PS1, and Creative Time to reimagine Art Breaks — a video series on MTV in the 1980s that first showcased video work by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Art Breaks 2012 featured videos by Sema Bekirovic, Cody Critcheloe, Andrew Kuo, Mads Lynnerup, Tala Madani, Mehra, Rashaad Newsome, Jani Ruscica, Mickalene Thomas, and Guido van der Werve. [11]
In 2018, Mehra was commissioned to create the Spring 2018 Canadian Art Magazine cover for the Dirty Words issue. For the cover image she recreated the set of the popular Canadian sketch comedy show, You Can't Do That On Television , and reimagined one of the infamous recurring moments when a character on set is being drenched with slime whenever they say I don't know. [12] That same issue also features an artist folio by her — entitled Tone — that explores the complexity of South Asian diasporic experiences. [13]
Mehra was the subject of a 2018 episode of the CBC Arts docuseries, In The Making. The series, hosted by Sean O’Neill, follows leading Canadian artists around the world as they bring their work to life. [14] In the series finale, Mehra travels to India to begin work on a new inflatable work — a bouncy castle Taj Mahal — that was then exhibited for the first time as a special project for Vision Exchange: Perspectives From India to Canada, which began its cross-Canada tour in September 2018. [15] The National Gallery of Canada acquired the work.
In 2023, Mehra was commissioned to create two new inflatable works for Nuit Blanche Toronto. [16]
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In addition to exhibits for its collection, the museum has organized and hosted a number of travelling arts exhibitions. Its building complex consists of a main building that includes 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) of indoor space and the adjacent 3,700-square-metre (40,000 sq ft) Qaumajuq building.
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