The ARTS at CIIS

 Nibha Akireddy | Mythology of the Mundane
In the The Third Floor Cafe Gallery

On View May 31 - September 15th!

I take these little stories from my life and people relate to them through their own personal stories.

Painting in a moment in our history when time both crept as though moving through molasses, yet somehow jump cut through days and weeks as if they never happened, Nibha Akireddy began to make self-portraits that unravel time as a linear concept. Minutes, weeks, and months pass in a single painted image, while the subject seems also to be pulling herself apart. She turns her head, and rather than the blurred motion of a slow shutter speed, we get another neck and head, a new arm and hand placed just so. She is at once aware and unconcerned with the viewer, a nonchalance that is unique to the artist’s generation, awash in selfies rapidly exchanged on the web.

 I was my only model, I was my best model, and I wanted to capture these chunks of time.

 Akireddy’s paintings tell stories of the ordinary and daily rituals of her life: brushing her teeth, spraying her hair with dry shampoo, smoking, burning incense. In the painting Bha: भ  , Nibha the subject almost challenges the viewer with her gaze, a toothbrush in one hand and cell phone in another, recording her actions in the mirror while a fire blazes in the background. Microphone and video icons in the scene resemble the bottom corner of the all-too-familiar screen of the zoom classroom. The title of the painting, Bha: भ   refers to the pronunciation of the artist’s name, and what it feels like to have it pronounced correctly.

It was the first time in college I'd ever had a professor who pronounced my name the way that my mom pronounces it,
or the way my family pronounces it. That was just like a very cool experience for me.

 The works are thick with cultural symbolism, both American and South Asian, as the artist has a foothold in each and embodies both. Also present are the symbols of youth and internet culture. We see evidence of self-documentation everywhere: in the cellphones that appear in the paintings, as well as the outstretched arms of the figure in Simhika, a work where the artist paints herself as a demoness of Hindu mythology. The subject’s gesture references a common pose in selfies, the self-portraiture that is created specifically by cellular phones for the internet. The cockroaches that appear in the paintings make reference to the roaches in the garage studio where she made the paintings: They creep into the artist’s own mythologies, coming out of her mouth, flying by as she brushes her teeth, exploding from her chest. Akireddy’s depiction of time combined with the hybridity of the mundane and mythological elevate everyday realities to otherworldly experiences.