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SHELLY BAHL
“Sisters of Shakti: I Created All Worlds at My Will, Without Any Higher Being, and Permeate and Dwell Within Them” 2021
Gouache and ink on watercolour paper
8 ¼ x 11 ¼ inches
SB- 01
“Sisters of Shakti: I Am the Queen, the Gatherer-Up of Treasures,
Most Thoughtful, First of Those Who Merit Worship.”, 2021
Gouache and ink on watercolour paper
8 ¼ x 11 ¼ inches
SB - 02
“Sisters of Shakti: I Pervade All Existing Creatures,
As Their Inner Supreme Self, and Manifest Them With my Body.”, 2021
Gouache and ink on watercolour paper
11 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches
SB - 03
Biography
Shelly Bahl is an interdisciplinary artist born in Benares, India. She spent her formative years in India and in Toronto, Canada, and is currently based in New York City. Her art projects have been presented in a number of solo and group exhibitions in North America and internationally. Select group exhibitions include: Center For Book Arts, NY; Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; AIFACS Gallery, Delhi; Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia; ABC No Rio (In Exile)/ Bullet Space Gallery, NY; Villa Terrace Museum, Milwaukee; Shirin Gallery, NY; Queens Museum of Art, NY; India International Centre Gallery, Delhi; Twelve Gates Gallery, Philadelphia; ART ASIA Miami, FL; Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago, IL; White Box, NY; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC; India Art Summit, Delhi; Aicon Gallery, NY; and the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh. Select solo exhibitions include: Bronx River Art Center, NY; LEE Ka-sing Gallery, Toronto; Design Exchange Museum, Toronto; Gallery 198, London, UK; Richmond Art Gallery, Vancouver; Gallery 44, Toronto; Khyber Centre For the Arts, Halifax; M.Y. Art Prospects, NY; Art Folio Gallery, Chandigarh; and Women’s Art Resource Centre Gallery, Toronto. Bahl has participated in short and long-term artist residencies at: Religare Arts Initiative, Delhi; Artists Alliance, NY; Banff Centre For the Arts; Matucana 100, Santiago; Vermont Studio Center; and Sanskriti Kendra Foundation, Delhi. In 2018-19 she was an Artist-In-Residence at the Center For Book Arts, NYC and at BRIC, Brooklyn. Bahl is a founding artist member of SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and ZEN-MIX 2000: Pan-Asian Visual Arts Network in Toronto. She was the founding director of SAVAC from 1997-1999. She has also served on the Board of Directors for the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective in NYC and Mercer Union Gallery, A Space Gallery and SAVAC in Toronto. She has received a number of visual arts production grants and fellowships for independent projects and artistic collaborations.
About the Work
Welcome friends to the Sisters of Shakti community! Are you weighed down by the trauma of daily living? This world is a place of suffering and illusion, but we invite you to imagine and build a better world with the Sisters. Our tropical paradise is an intentional residential community of women, where we heal ourselves and prepare to heal the world. - Ma Svetlana Anoushka Mahashakti
Shelly Bahl is an interdisciplinary artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture/ installation, performance, photography and video. Her art practice explores the strange and surreal aspects of cultural hybridity and old and new forms of colonization. She is interested in the global transmission of iconographies and other forms of visual culture. She also investigates the surrealistic experiences of women who lead enigmatic trans-cultural lives. These narratives are based in facts and fictions rooted in specific cultural histories, which she then re-contextualizes and re-imagines.