Nature Shankar (b.1996) is a Singaporean visual artist who approaches painting/drawing as an object and monument. Her work is material, process, and movement driven. With an almost makeshift and tactile approach to making, her works and overall practice teeter on the edge of being “in progress”, laced with a distinct sense of humanity.
Nature is interested in intimate forms of persistence, resistance and reclamation. Through materiality and observations of the everyday, she uses the notion of comfort to explore our ever evolving relationship with these themes.
Based in New York City, Nature is pursuing her MFA as a Merit Scholarship candidate at Pratt Institute. She has exhibited internationally such as with Gajah Gallery, Indonesia (2018), Jendela Visual Art Space Esplanade, Singapore (2021) and Art Fair Philippines (2022). She has participated in residencies in New York (USA), Bandung, (Indonesia) and Singapore.
Seeing Through Ferns, 101 x 161 cm, Chinese Ink, Charcoal, Fabric & paper pulp, graphite, sand, chalk, calico, stainless steel screws on ply wood framed in pinewood, 2022
In this new series of works, Nature Shankar continues her explorations into materialising comfort. Taking inspiration from her bedroom window and the life outside it, her works attempt to contextualise her discomfort with leaving home. Touch heavy method of making driven by material, process and bodily engagement attempt to give physicality to the intangible — a loss of agency and the stream of consciousness that accompanies it.
What she categorises as ‘everyday materials of comfort’, both tactile and intangible, undergo numerous forms of manipulation and experimentation. Materials associated with her ‘anti-anxious’ life at home such as ingredients from comfort food, journals and quilts are processed using bodily intervention and various craft inspired techniques. The intangible comfort heavily drawn from for this series is the rhythmic (or reliable) swaying of a slightly uprooted tree outside her window. Together, boundaries of these materials are repeatedly pushed as they are constantly constructed and deconstructed in an erratic process that not only requires, but demands space.
Afterthought, 25 x 30 cm, Chinese Ink, Charcoal, paper pulp, roselle, roselle flowers, turmeric, dye, graphite, chalk, sand, calico, stainless steel screws and pinewood on plywood, 2022
Bedside Manners, 27 x 22 cm, Chinese Ink, Charcoal, paper pulp, roselle, turmeric, dye, graphite, chalk, sand, calico, stainless steel screws and pinewood on plywood, 202
Tiny Twig or Big Scratch, 84 x 31 cm, Chinese Ink, Charcoal, paper pulp, roselle, turmeric, dye, graphite, chalk, sand, calico, stainless steel screws and pinewood on plywood, 2022
Cloudy Vision, Splinters, and a Tiny Man, 87 x 158cm, Chinese Ink, Charcoal, Fabric & paper pulp, roselle, turmeric, dye, graphite, chalk, sand, calico, stainless steel screws and pinewood on ply wood, 2022
View the rest of the exhibition here.
