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Print (MA)

Aanal Chandaria

Aanal Chandaria (b.1973, London) holds a BA in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, The School of Oriental and African Studies and an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture from Oxford University. She earnt a Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts with Distinction from Chelsea College of Arts in 2017 and has completed numerous short courses at the Royal Drawing School and The Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts. She embarked on an MA in Print at the Royal College of Art in 2019.

Her exhibitions include Impressions at Southwark Park Galleries in 2022, COMMON GROUND & at Copeland Gallery in 2021, If you want it fresh buy it frozen at The Cookhouse and Big Fridge at Safe House in 2017.

a woman with her eyes closed

My work seeks the poetic through the disciplines of animation, book binding, collage, drawing, installation, painting, photography, poetry and printmaking. It reflects upon wider questions of identity, heritage, journey, love and belonging in relation to time, space, history and memory. I am interested in the interplay of narratives, from the wider historical and political to the personal and symbolic, and am inspired by my Indian and Kenyan heritage as it relates to the global.

The idea of rasa, 'juice' or 'essence', with its nine 'moods', which lies at the heart of Indian art theory is key to my work. Fury, heroism, wonder, romance, disgust, horror, compassion, laughter and peace, each with its ascribed colour has given me much food for thought.

My work is tinged with a playful, gentle humour, with space for the metaphysical and spiritual as well as the geo-political.

With a joy with the natural world, my work draws on the traditions of hand-craft and the use of natural materials and objects. Never far from art history the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Pierre Joseph Redoute, Nadir Al’ Asri ‘Wonder of the Age’ Master Mansur, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon and Zarina Bhimji amongst others continue to inspire me.


text
Hob Job MagnifiedDigital Print on Somerset Velvet paper | 38 x 27.5 cm
a plate with (food) rotli or chapatty  on it
For the Love of RotliDigital photograph
a plate with (food ) rotli or chapatty on it
Africa on a PlateDigital photograph

Reading Hobson - Jobson, A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases made me think of the hob daughters and job daughters and hyphenated cultural realities. The thought of India not being a home is foreign to me.

Food its history and sociology give me constant ‘food for thought’. There are recipes and there are rituals, where the good foods of this earth become potent symbols, deep with mystic, mythic and metaphorical association.

The proverb “Home is where the Hearth is” rings true to me. As does “You are what you Eat.”

a skeleton with paintings of fruits, vegetables, nuts and flowers
Lucy Lucretia Lakshmi Lilibet LuchitaWatercolour on paper on acrylic model | 180 x 46 x 62 cm
a composite painting of a person with flowers, fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains
Nyum Nyum VertumnusOil on gessoed board | 55.6 x 68 cm
a diagram of a palette with symbols, text and numbers
Rasa Palette PalateHandpainted Screenprint on Somerset paper | 57 x 76.5 cm | Edition 1/8
a group of colorful squares with golden mangoes
24 Carat Kesar QualityScreenprint with 24 carat gold leaf on paper | 25 x 25 cm each | Edition of 16
a group of colorful squares with golden mangoes
24 Carat Kesar QualityScreenprint with 24 carat gold leaf on paper | 25 x 25 each | Edition of 16

The Evolution and Elocution of Love is a post pandemic vignette and installation that sets out space and room for interaction. Bringing Rasa theory to the palette and palate in good humour it stages, taking from ideas described in the Natya Shastra, attributed to Bharata Muni and ideas of drama more generally.

The aesthetic theory it asserts, is that entertainment is a desired effect of performance arts, but not the primary goal. The primary goal is to move the audience into another parallel reality, full of wonder where they experience the essence of their own consciousness, and reflect on spiritual and moral questions.

Featuring a sculpture of Lucy Lucretia Lakshmi Lilibet Luchita and a portrait of Nyum Nyum Vertumnus, based on Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s portrait of Rudolf II of Hungary and Bohemia it carries Charles Darwin’s salient message, “We are a part of not apart from”.

The golden 24 Carat Kesar Quality keri or mango, a king of fruits, is suspended between them.

Behind them, prints that define their evolution, time of revolution and room for resolution. A catalogue entry of Jean Simeon Chardin’s Simian, The Monkey Painter of 1740, attesting to the craze for singerie and symbolically questioning ‘Am I a good artist or simply a good student?’. An image of a cast of AL 288 - 1 Lucy, the 3.2 million year old plant eating hominin from the Afar triangle in the Awash valley of Ethiopia discovered in 1974. A reproduction of a print by William Hogarth of The Analysis of Beauty Plate 1, complete with the 7 stages of the S-shaped Serpentine Curved line that in his opinion excited the attention of the viewer and evoked liveliness and movement. 

As Octavio Paz writes, “Love is one of the clearest examples of that double instinct which causes us to dig deeper into our own selves and at the same time to emerge from our selves in another : death and re-creation, solitude and communion.” ’The Dialectic of Solitude’ in The Labyrinth of Solitude, 2008.

Ideas of He equals aime see squared are never far from my mind as I think through how Einstein’s equation and formula could be expressed by Lucy Lucretia Lakshmi Lilibet Luchita as an aside to Nyum Nyum Vertumnus.

Medium:

Installation
Book with Ramphal fruit on title page and cup cut out of mirrored card

This green cloth covered Coptic bound hand illustrated digitally printed book explores eating Ramphal and Sitaphal fruit, also known as the Custard Apple as an expression of love in rhyme.

20 x 20 cm | 10 pages | Edition of 3


an engraving of two zebras with beaded pattern border
Beaded Birth IHandpainted Etching | 32 x 32 cm
an engraving of 2 zebras with beaded pattern border
Beaded Birth IIHandpainted Etching | 32 x 32 cm
An Engraving of 2 pairs of zebra with a border
Earning Our StripesEtching with Ink drawing | 56.6 x 78.2 cm | Edition Variable
text, collage zebra by Mansur Ethiopia, Maqdala restituted chalice and crown
Zabda Principles of HarmonyCollage and digital print with tea staining | 42 x 29.7 cm

Made after witnessing the birth of a zebra in the Masai Mara, after my paternal grandmother's passing, I am still awed at how it came to its feet within 15 minutes. Each in each others protection.

Nadir Al ' Asri 'Wonder of the Age' Master Mansur's depiction of the zebra presented to Jahangir in 1621 inspired me as did the the realisation of lineage.

a concertina fold book depicting views of Mount Kailash
a suitcase with a book, box, ammonite and hat on it, poetry on a plate, a jar of lapis lazuli water, a paintbrush and twig
Blue Sky Thinking, Homelands, Prayers and Picturesque PursuitsInstallation | 58 x 92 x 32 cm

This book brings hand drawn pictures and poetry of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet together to bring this special place to you. Through to your own hands, eyes, heart, mind and senses. The precious waters of the lake mixed with lapis lazuli make the sky.

15 x 10 cm | 19 pages | Digital printing, letterpress and hand colouring, concertina binding with cloth bound hard cover | Edition of 8