Anoushka Mirchandani (b. 1988; Pune, India) deploys her painting practice as an act of agency, locating, and relocating, aspects of identity in new contexts under novel circumstances. At a young age, Mirchandani emigrated from India to the United States, where she discovered new liberties as a woman, but also grappled with her newfound identity as an immigrant and the parts of herself she was forced to leave behind. The artist has developed a visual language in her painting practice that parallels these concealed and revealed aspects of the self, which she uses to navigate and express variegated facets of identity.
Mirchandani’s works center around figures caught between moments of repose and action. Often, they are women who are posed nonchalantly, unbothered by social expectations of modesty or humility typically imposed based on gender. Parts of their bodies—limbs, torsos, heads—slip into their backgrounds, delineated only by expressively rendered outlines in oil stick or pastel. The juxtaposition of brazen poses with disappearing bodies begs the question: what parts of ourselves do we suppress, and how much do we let come to the foreground in new and foreign circumstances? Having herself wrestled with this question for years, Mirchandani gives form to its complexities and ambiguities in her paintings of feminine figures who rebel yet conform, resist yet assimilate.
Anoushka Mirchandani has mounted solo exhibitions at Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India; UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA; Rhodes Contemporary Art. London, UK; and Glass Rice Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Mirchandani has exhibited internationally in group exhibitions at Bode Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Legion Projects, Heraldsburg, CA; Knowhere Art Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, NY; 111 Minna Gallery, Root Division, and Arc Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Work by Mirchandani is held in the public collection of the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The artist received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2022, and has been an artist-in-residence at Wassaic Project, NY; Global Coralition, Sosua, Dominican Republic; KYTA, Ladakh, India; and Aegean Idea Lab, Paros, Greece. Anoushka Mirchandani earned her BA from Denison University, and studied painting at City College, San Francisco, CA. The artist was born in Pune, India, and currently lives and works in New York, NY.