Sheila Makhijani

Born in New Delhi, Makhijani attended College of Art, Delhi, where she completed a master's degree in Arts degree. In 1993, she studied at Kanazawa Bijutsu Kogei Daigaku, or Kanazawa College of Art, in Kanazawa, Japan, and she has since participated in a number of workshops and art festivals, including the Khoj International Artists Workshop in both 1998 and 2001, and the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial, in 2012.[https://www.talwargallery.com/ Talwar Gallery, (desi)re, New York: Talwar Gallery, 2005.] Her works have been exhibited internationally in the Netherlands, India, and Australia, including at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Perth, Australia, and Talwar Gallery, which currently represents the artist, in New York and in New Delhi. Makhijani currently lives and works in New Delhi.

Makhijani's work spans a variety of media. Although her drawings have been said to be her "primary engagement," she has works regularly in a range of materials, including painting, gouache, mixed-media, collage, and sculpture.Roobina Karode, "The Secret Life of Sheila Makhijani," Art India, October–December 1999"Complex Visuality", Art India, August 2003. Makhijani's artistic practice, in fact, blurs the lines between media; she seems to carve space onto her canvases and within her paintings, which result from a process of accretion and erasure, while her sculptures often read as three-dimensional drawings.Valerie Gladstone, "Sheila Makhijani", Art News, February 2006."Restless tangles," Art India, 2007 The inclusion of Makhijani's piece "Take a leap" in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)'s 2010 exhibition, On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, calls attention to this intermingling of dimensions in Makhijani's oeuvre; the work, which is a kind of collage of drawings on paper, stitched together with thread, concretises the act and the space of drawing.Catherine de Zegher, "A Century Under the Sign of Line: Drawing and Its Extension (1910–2010)", in On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010.Meera Mezenes, Living Off the Grid, New Delhi: Anant Art, 2009. Her paintings and gouaches, often vividly coloured, feature webs of undulating, interweaving lines that both question and transgress the very boundaries they create.Meera Menezes, Construction/Deconstruction, February 2007. Although almost exclusively non-figurative, Makhijani's works possess an energy and movement that seem to pulsate with life; her lines have been called “moving spirits refusing to be tied down,” forms that “take on a life of their own,” full of “untrammeled glee.”Deepak Talwar, “Forward,” BLIP!, New York: Talwar Gallery, 2005.Meera Menezes, “Webs of the mind”, BLIP!, New York: Talwar Gallery, 2005. Each of Makhijani's works creates its own world, as animate and as vivid as the one beyond its edges, playfully enticing the viewer into an exploration of the relationship among line, color, and space.Roobina Karode, On Track, October 2007.David Burnett, "Sheila Makhijani: Still painting," APT 7: Exhibition Catalogue, Queensland: Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, 2013.Roobina Karode, The Secret Life of Sheila Makhijani, Art India, October–December 1999.

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202303/sheila-makhijani-90186 Artforum, "Sheila Makhijani," March 2023.]
• [https://www.talwargallery.com/news/the-indian-express The Indian Express, "Taking the Line for a Walk," April 2019.]
• [https://www.talwargallery.com/news/artforum2 Artforum, "Critic's Pick: Sheila Makhijani," April 2019.]
• [https://www.talwargallery.com/news/art-india3 Art India, "The Secret Life of Sheila Makhijani," October-December 1999.]

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Category:1962 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century Indian painters

Category:Women artists from Delhi

Category:Painters from Delhi

Category:21st-century Indian women artists

Category:20th-century Indian women painters