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 is currently a Visiting Artist Fellow at “The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute” at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA in March - April 2023. She received “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 and Peers - Khoj International Artists' Association, New Delhi, (2018).
Her recent participation includes “ India Art Fair”, Gallery Latitude 28, New Delhi(2023); “Futur Proche” Apre Art House, Mumbai(2023); “Where Shall We Plant The Placenta”, A Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam(2022); “Non- Fungible Speculations”, Nature Morte, New Delhi(2022); "The World Awaits You Like a Garden", Latitude 28, New Delhi (2022); "The Pool of Memories", Surrey Art Gallery, Canada(2022); "Hurting and Healing - Let's Imagine a Different Heritage", Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, (2022), ‘Terrain Offline’, Bikaner House, New Delhi, India (2021) and "Garden State", Garage Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2021) among others.
She has received State Award, Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2018; Sohan Qadri Fellowship, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2017; State Award, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, in 2017 and 2012, and Scholarship to Young Artists, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, in 2011. She was chosen by Hindustan Times as one of the Top 30-under-30 young achievers in 2017.
Manjot graduated from Government College of Art, Chandigarh in 2012.