Nirali Thakker
The Wall, 2020
5 X 4 feet
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
The Wall- A reflection on my childhood
Wall represents nostalgia for my old house I grew up in, back in India.
The walls in America are perfectly smooth, flat, uniform and beautiful. They make me miss the walls from my childhood home just the same. The peels in the walls in my house had ambiguous forms that transformed sometimes into clouds, sometimes into monsters, or the face of a protective benevolent father . My mother taught me to see shapes in those ambiguous forms- there began my training as an artist, gazing at the imperfect yet strong walls.
Wall is my old home had so much character built into it due to the repairs, repaints, repairs, seepage of water- it is almost like a wound that you attempt to repair over and over again.
The walls I stare at now, during this lock down constantly make me reflect on the walls from my childhood.
Nirali Thakker
Recalculating, 2020
18 X 24 inches
Oil on canvas, collage
Recalculating
Long drives constantly puts me in a reflective and meditative state- which is why I get lost so often.
The deserted landscape reflects on my feeling of being lost, geographically and psychologically. I am constantly wondering where I am, where I am going and why am I going there- which is my confusion as an immigrant in a foreign land and as a middle aged woman of color. People often mistake me for being from middle East and my image of myself driving a car as a woman in burkha ( black veil that Muslim women wear), I wanted to assert their right to drive a car and assert their physical presence in the “outside world”.
I also wanted to show the red strap of my bra to reflect on my confusion- how to represent myself to be taken seriously- should I represent myself as a conservative woman in a burkha or should I assert my sexuality like an American woman. The red bra strap also reflects on latent hidden desires.
The word “recalculating” represents literally the GPS. I do wish, there was a GPS guiding me in life.
Nirali Thakker
2:00 AM/Woman in Red Bedsheet, 2020
10 X 12 inches
Acrylic and ink on canvas
2:00 am ( woman in red bed sheet)
The time of 2 am-which is a space between sleep, dreams and insomnia is an interesting one. It can make me reflect on my subconscious fantasies and sexual desires and the insomnia makes me dwell on the trauma that prevents me from attaining the desires. The red bed sheet represents potent ground for expressing desires whereas the loneliness and emotional by contrast makes the image mournful in its own way.