MUMBAI.- Chemould Prescott Road welcomes Dhruvi Acharya’s return with her much-awaited solo show, After the Fall, in India after 8 years. In her new paintings and a large site specific soft-sculptural installation, artist Dhruvi Acharya tries to investigate what happens to the mind, body and soul when one experiences that which is unfathomable, irreversible and unpredictable.

Employing her subtle, dark and wry humour, Dhruvi Acharya’s new body of work explores the arduous emotional and psychological processes of reconstructing one’s self and returning to a purposeful life. The work exposes the numbness, the disbelief and the deafening screams in one’s head, where battles have to be fought in order to understand and accept a new, altered reality.

In her lusciously painted world, human forms morph to match their mental state, comic book inspired empty thought and speech bubbles convey ineffable emotions, and memory drawings fade in and out of layers of paint; merging the past, the present and imagined futures.

A monochromatic bedroom installation allows viewers to enter a space, both dreamlike and disorienting, where memories are made tangible in soft sculptures, enveloped by two decades of drawings.

The myriad visual detailing in Acharya’s work lures viewers to reflect on their own experiences and sentiments, making the specifics of the stories and the meaning of each image unimportant, and allowing for the contemplation of our shared human existence.

Dhruvi Acharya (b) 1975, Mumbai, India.

Dhruvi Acharya received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, USA in 1998, and completed her Post Baccalaureate in 1996 from the same college. Acharya began exhibiting her works professionally in 1998 in the USA where she spent 10 years. In India, she has held several solo exhibitions from 2002 to 2010 with Gallery Chemould/Chemould Prescott Road and Nature Morte, New Delhi. Following her 2010 solo show at Kravets/Wehby in New York, she completed a 32 foot mural for the JSW Foundation in Mumbai and presented an 18 foot scroll for the exhibition curated by Geeta Kapur which celebrated 50 years of Chemould history in 2013. Acharya has been the recipient of the FICCI Young Woman Achievers award in 2013, and was featured on the cover of India Today in 2005.

Her selected participations include: Mythopoetic, QCA Gallery & GUAG, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia (2013), Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern and Contemporary Art from India, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, (2011); Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now, Queens Museum of Art, New York, (2005); Ideas & Images VI - Art in Mumbai, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, (2004); Words and Images, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India (2002); Three Contemporary Painters: Nilima Sheikh, Manisha Parekh, Dhruvi Acharya, Bose Pacia Modern, New York, (2001); Art of Modern India, Bose Pacia Modern Gallery, New York, (2000).

The artist lives and works in Mumbai.