My drawings, paintings, and time-based media attempt to decolonize the sovereignty of ecology and women’s bodies. My practice intersects the boundaries of speculative fiction, archetypal allegories, and precarious ecologies to push back against the centering of human as a protagonist and move toward a thinking that eradicates the hierarchy of being. My works explore what it means to be human, what it means to be non-human, and where these meanings rupture and collide. At large, my paintings open up possibilities for a post-queer and post-human world where beings move towards an uncanny kind of becoming in a multispecies world.
Inventing fiction from mythology and the natural world offers powerful tools to demodernize the existing dualist constructs of nature and culture, raising questions concerning power and agency. My works are intimate worlds encompassing the anthropology of wonder and awe, proposing narratives that imagine a multi-species future. Cross-pollinating ancient mythologies, I counter-narrate iconic motifs & attributes, & set them in juxtaposition with one another, to allow opportunities for critical reflection. Threaded throughout are revelations of sexuality, fecundity, kinship, and freedom to rethink the meaning of motherhood in present times.
My detailed and intimate paintings invite viewers to spend time with them and ponder over the symbiosis between humankind and ecology. How do the worlds that we create in fantasy impact our thinking practices? How do we mourn for what we have lost and what efforts are required to regain the biodiversity that is currently on the verge of extinction? What stories should we narrate to offer notions of care and help fantasize for a sovereign present and future for ourselves and the other species with whom we cohabit on this planet?
Biography
Manjot Kaur’s (b. 1989, Ludhiana, Punjab, India) drawings, paintings, and Time-based media attempt to de-patriarch-ize the sovereignty of ecology and women’s bodies. She cross-pollinates ancient mythologies and histories to reflect on the relationship between humans and more than humans. Her works delve deep into intimate worlds encompassing the anthropology of wonder and awe, proposing narratives that imagine a multi-species future, by responding to ecological grief and loneliness through acts of care and kinship.
Manjot has received many prestigious grants and fellowships such as The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA in March - April 2023; Sustaina India Fellowship at CEEW (Council on Energy, Environment and Water) and Generator Art Production Fund grant from Experimenter Gallery, India in 2022. She has been an artist in residence at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands, 2020-21; 1 Shanthiroad, Bangalore, 2019; Unidee, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy 2018 funded by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, India; Peers - Khoj International Artists' Association, New Delhi, 2018 and Museo Casa Masaccio Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy – a cross-institutional program with Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, 2018.
Her recent participations include ‘Green Snake - Women Centered Ecologies’ curated by Kathryn Weir, at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, 2023; Tomorrows/Today section at Investec Cape Town Art Fair curated by Mariella Franzoni, with Gallery Caroline O’Breen, Amsterdam; ‘Becoming Earths’, Gallery Caroline O’Breen, Amsterdam during Amsterdam Art Week, 2023; Art Mumbai with LATITUDE 28, Mumbai, 2023; Delhi Contemporary Art Week with LATITUDE 28, Bikaner House, New Delhi, 2023; ‘Conjunction of the Spheres’, curated by Girish Shahane, Delhi Contemporary Art Week, Bikaner House, New Delhi, 2023; India Art Fair with LATITUDE 28, New Delhi, 2023; ‘Where Shall We Plant The Placenta’ curated by Julia Geerlings at A Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam, 2022; ‘Non-Fungible Speculations’ curated by Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, Nature Morte, New Delhi, 2022; ‘The World Awaits You Like a Garden’ with curatorial advice by Sugata Ray, LATITUDE 28, New Delhi, 2022; ‘The Pool of Memories’ curated by Suvi Bains, Surrey Art Gallery, Canada, 2022; ‘Hurting and Healing - Let's Imagine a Different Heritage’ curated by Charles Ecshe, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2022; ‘Terrain Offline’, Bikaner House, New Delhi, India, 2021 and ‘Garden State’ curated by Fadwa Naamna, Garage Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2021 among others.
Her awards include State Award, Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2018; Sohan Qadri Fellowship, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2017; State Award, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2017 and 2012, and Scholarship to Young Artists, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, 2011. She was chosen by Hindustan Times as one of the Top 30-under-30 young achievers in 2017.