MADHVI SUBRAHMANIAN
singapore / mumbai, india
Madhvi Subrahmanian, at work on her Kolam drawings around gum marks, New York City, 2020.
Madhvi Subrahmanian, walk and chew gum…,View of installation at Hunter College, New York, 2020.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, detail from walk and chew gum… 2020. Acrylic on water color paper, 6” x 6”.
My practice has always reflected my immediate environment, guided by the challenges of changing circumstances and a migratory life. However, these are strange and uncertain times and I have no idea how this pandemic will affect and shape my work.
Currently I find myself in the midst of one of the world’s epicenters of Covid-19: New York City. In early March, as part of my residency at Hunter College, I installed my solo exhibition walk and chew gum…at the Thomas Hunter Project Space. A few days after the opening, the lockdown was imposed on NYC and while my show remains in place, there is sadly no audience.
Seeing “The City That Never Sleeps” silenced by the pandemic has been astonishing. Since I no longer have access to a studio, I’ve made the city my studio and the pavement on East 67th Street my canvas. Expanding on the theme of my solo show, I now explore the city grid as a live platform. My meditations on the city in various media—on paper, clay, stop motion film, and in situ, on the pavement—map the chewing gum remnants visible all over the city.
The ubiquitous gum residue records the city in busier times and marks the movement of people, revealing the places where they congregated or departed from one another. Inspired by the daily ritual of welcoming each new day with a kolam (rice flour drawing)—a common practice in South India—I draw ephemeral, organic kolams around the gum marks on the pavement, waiting patiently to feel that buzz of human activity again.
During the lockdown, MADHVI SUBRAHMANIAN has taken her explorations into the empty streets of Manhattan, making the city her studio and the sidewalk her sketch book. she has been making ‘kolam’ paintings around the chewing gum marks left by new yorkers in busier times.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, Untitled Kolam Drawing, panoramic photograph, 2020. New York City sidewalk, rice flour.
Madhavi Subrahmanian on the streets of New York City, 2020.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, Untitled Kolam drawings, 2020. New York City sidewalk, rice flour.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, Walk & Chew Gum series, 2020. u=Untitled photomontage #2.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, Drawing around the gum marks, 2020. New York City sidewalk, rice flour.
Madhvi Subrahmnanian, Drawing around the gum marks, 2020. New York City sidewalk, rice flour.