Anoushka Mirchandani (b. 1988; Pune, India) deploys her painting practice as an act of agency, selecting elements of her identity and relocating them in new contexts under novel circumstances. At the age of 18, 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. With her painting, the artist has developed a visual language of code-switching, which she uses to express and navigate the variegated facets of her identity.
Mirchandani's figurative works center around one or two figures in intimate moments of repose. Often, they are women, posing nonchalantly in limited clothing, unbothered by social expectations of modesty or humility typically demanded of women. 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? This is a question all immigrants are confronted with, and one that manifests uniquely for women living under patriarchal circumstances. Having herself wrested with this question for years, Mirchandani gives form to its complexities and ambiguities in her paintings of feminine figures who rebel yet fade, 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. 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 lives and works in San Francisco, California.