Paree Rohera "Give and Take", 2025 Oil and acrylic on canvas 16 x 25 inches
Paree Rohera is a painter from Mumbai, India, currently pursuing a BFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Living between India and the U.S. for the past four years has programmed a categorical method of artistic research for her practice—a storage of themes and iconography in Mumbai, and then, a transfer of ideas at RISD. This rhythm of inspiration and introspection has been extremely fruitful, consistently allowing her to paint in some sort of a reflective space. Geographically, composing art in a western environment has initiated an enjoyment of making work that rejects the white-gaze as the primary lens, while also being able to remotely contemplate on the discourses of white supremacy in India and the effects of its colonial past. In a way, the retrospection of home gives her strong equipment to feel security within an idea or visual image as it becomes woven into larger themes like standards of beauty, gender and class. More than a colonial gaze, her work is affected by a South Asian gaze shaped by coloniality—a legacy of Westernization that permeated notions of physical beauty. From ads promoting“brighter faces” and smoother legs to products for whiter, hairless armpits, these ideals relentlessly pushed whiteness and smaller, “feminine” features as aspirational. She recollects the normalization of nose clips and massages to shrink noses, and the painful methods of hair removal introduced to her at 15, all reinforcing the idea that beauty required manipulating the body to align with Western ideals. It wasn’t until she left this environment and came to the U.S.that she began to see these narratives with greater clarity. Distance from those ingrained standards made it essential for her to create work that pushes against them, exploring and celebrating South Asian features and beauty beyond the constraints of colonial influence. It was within this context that the caricatures in her work came to life. The consistent side profile of these figures became powerful, allowing an emphasis on the features she aim to foreground—especially the big nose, a feature often scrutinized in her narrative, often, by her own self. She is most confident to commit to a painting when a theme she is momentarily grappling with coordinates with the visual imagery she is inspired to create. These side profile caricatures have been reliable to her in this way, serving as a bridge between concept and aesthetic, supporting the visual lexicons of surrealism and sometimes, the political narrative she aims to convey.