shiv lalgi: Crème Fraîche Salon

Shiv’s practice draws on collective and personal histories, and is an exploration of the quiet, often invisible, process of survival and adaptation. She considers her figures as rooted in psychological spaces rather than specific situations, akin to the tender thresholds between waking and dreaming, or presence and absence. Her palette, of subdued but vivid blues and greens, is key to evoking this sense of the slightly removed, positioning all of her subjects in a kind of eternal twilight. In restricting the range of colours within a work, focus can be placed on gesture, form, and emotional resonance.

The use of particular hues for the figures of her compositions is inspired by Shiv’s grandmother’s handmade brass decorations. The earthy tone hints at something primal and ancient, somehow detached and outside of the bounds of natural time - at once warm and uneasy, like statues. When set against the cool colours of the paintings’ backgrounds, the brass yellow becomes spotlighted and takes on an almost ritualistic presence.

Shiv applies thin layers of acrylic washes that seep into barely primed canvas, creating hazy atmospheric textures that direct the tone of the painting, suggestive of some ephemerality, tenderness and stillness. Her gestural brushwork is at first tight and precise, with certain elements subsequently worked over more loosely to add ambiguity.

The visual language of her paintings draws on the iconography and symbolism of Indo-Persian and Mughal miniature painting, combining with subjects found in photographs, postcards, and cultural ephemera, which are repurposed through the imitation of linear quality and two-dimensional flatness.