In Conversation with Habiba Nowrose

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In Conversation with Habiba Nowrose

Habiba Nowrose is a Dhaka-based photographer and researcher whose practice largely revolves around making staged portraits that explore the role of gender in shaping human relationships. Through the series Concealed (2013) and Life of Venus (2018), she attempts to address the notions of beauty, anonymity, and how women are often compelled to live up to societal and familial expectations. We speak with her about her image-making process, the challenges she has had to encounter through her practice and her experiments with the narrative form of traditional documentary photography.

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In Conversation With Nibha Sikander

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In Conversation With Nibha Sikander

Nibha Sikander's artistic practice involves using layer upon layer of intricately cut out, coloured card paper to create critters, birds and moths, in all their marbled and mottled glory. Her deconstructed renditions of real and imagined creatures have an almost lifelike quality to them and are an attempt to quietly engage with the larger question of preserving the wonders that nature offers. Nibha tells us about her current work, her detail-driven process, and her inspiration from the coastal town of Murud-Janjira in Maharashtra, where she lives.

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In Conversation With Rajesh Soni

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In Conversation With Rajesh Soni

Rajesh Soni is a third-generation artist from Mewar, Rajasthan, who specialises in hand-colouring and painting photographs. His grandfather, Prabhu Lal Soni (Verma), was an artist and the personal photographer of Maharana Bhopal Singh of Mewar. His skills of overpainting photographs were passed down to Rajesh through the intermediary of his father Lalit. Rajesh talks to us about his longstanding collaboration with Udaipur-based photographer Waswo X. Waswo, an outcome of a rather serendipitous meeting.

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In Conversation With Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai

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In Conversation With Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai works with a range of mediums, from painting and printmaking to embroidery on textiles. While her artistic practice is primarily concerned with women and the space that they occupy, it is also informed by personal experience. Well-versed in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, language and script find their way into her artworks as well.

Arshi’s new exhibition and debut solo show, which opened at Blueprint 12 in New Delhi, showcases her latest work, Nafas or The Isolation Diaries. We caught up with the artist to talk about Nafas, her use of textiles in her work and her idea of home, while she lives and works between Kabul and New Delhi.

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Samanta Batra Mehta and Nirupa Rao in Conversation From Isolation

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Samanta Batra Mehta and Nirupa Rao in Conversation From Isolation

Samanta Batra Mehta and Nirupa Rao approach their artistic practice very differently, each with a unique voice and creative process. The work of both artists, however, is rooted in a love for botany. New York City-based Samanta works with illustration, text and photography to create multi-layered, mixed-media installations that draw connections between the environment and the human condition. Nirupa's botanical illustrations are inspired by her regular field visits into the wild–the most recent of which was to the forests of the Western Ghats. The Bangalore-based artist collaborates closely with botanists to achieve scientific accuracy.

Monsoon Malabar connected with Samantha and Nirupa via email to discuss their varied inspirations, love of books and how covid has changed the way they work in their respective cities.

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8 Art Professionals on How They're Adapting to Isolation During the Coronavirus Pandemic

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8 Art Professionals on How They're Adapting to Isolation During the Coronavirus Pandemic

When people are confined to their homes, and the machine of the global economy comes to all but a screeching halt, art becomes a rare form of solace. Art also becomes a means of sharing experiences—the pandemic does not affect us all equally. Art reminds those who are lucky enough to have homes to be quarantined in, to remain employed and be financially stable—that there are many who are less fortunate. Art allows communities to engage with the world at large—it allows people a window into a world they would otherwise have no access to.

Monsoon Malabar reached out to art professionals from India and overseas, to discuss how the pandemic has influenced, affected, or changed their work—and what they believe the future holds for the world of art.

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In Conversation with Stephanie Douet & Roshan Chhabria

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In Conversation with Stephanie Douet & Roshan Chhabria

Coming from diverse backgrounds and different parts of the world, Stephanie Douet and Roshan Chhabria first connected via Instagram while chatting about the British Raj. This developed into a collaborative series titled Indo-Anglian Conversations, which was exhibited at the India Club in London. We caught up with Stephanie and Roshan to talk about their artistic collaboration, creative process and the way their works have been influenced by one another.

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