about this blog – posted 10/7/14 in Boulder

1200 Hilma_af_Klint_Svanen1200 Maya Deren

1200 Helena-Almeida1200 72 Nasreen dpi hgb_pressebild_854

top left image: Hilma af-Klint, top right image: Maya Deren

bottom left image: Helena Almeida, bottom right image: Nasreen Mohamedi

I am leaving for New Delhi, India on October 23rd. I am starting this blog to document my project titled Nasreen and I in Delhi. This venture is part of my larger project “Searching Selves” which is a long term investigation of some exceptional women artists of the twentieth century such as Portuguese conceptualist Helena Almeida (b. 1934), Swedish mystic abstractionist Hilma af -Klint (1862-1944), Russian-American avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren (1917-1961), Indian minimalist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) among others.

Through a series of research-based explorations I have found correspondences in content, in material, and/or sources of inspiration with these women artists that embeds them in my practice. In 2013, the first project in this series unpacked the work of Maya Deren’s 1940’s film “Meshes of the Afternoon” concluding with the exhibition Me and Maya. You can view this project and my other work on my website at: https://www.sherrywiggins.com/work/me-and-maya.

Below is my first post about the project Nasreen and I in Delhi. I will be making posts in the coming days and weeks on: my ongoing research on Mohamedi – comparisons of my own work to Mohamedi’s – my experiences in India during the residency – the artwork I make in India and more.

Nasreen and I in Delhi – posted 10/1/14 in Boulder

1200 72 dpi Wiggins Stripes1200 72 dpi nasreen-mohamedi

left image: Sherry Wiggins, gouache and graphite on paper, 18 x 24 in, 2013

right image: untitled, Nasreen Mohamedi, black and white photograph, 10 3/8 x 14 in, 1981, courtesy Talwar Gallery, New York, New Delhi

I am engaging with the art making processes of 20th-century abstract Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) through the intensive study of her work and of the writing and criticism about her work. While I am in India, I will be making my own drawings and photographs in dialogue with her. Nasreen’s art takes form in beautiful linear and minimal drawings as well as in restrained black and white photographs. I have found many commonalities both aesthetic and conceptual between my art making practice and Mohamedi’s. I will retrace her steps and find my own in the remarkable city of Delhi. I will experiment with and extrapolate on Nasreen’s unique approach to the mediums of photography and drawing during an artist residency at the Sankskriti Foundation in Delhi October 25th 2014 to November 18th 2014. 

The following video on You Tube “Remembering Nasreen Mohamedi, The Artist” is a good short introduction to Mohamedi’s work. It was made during a major exhibition of her work at the Kiran Nadar Museum in New Delhi in 2013: