Maithili Chaturvedi "Helen of Bombay", 2024 Oil on velvet 65 x 38 inches
Maithili Chaturvedi (b. 2003, Mumbai, India) is a painter whose practice engages with worship of the Woman on screen. She re-authors the Hindi-language cinema icons into intimate pseudo-self-portraits, while exploring the politics of desire, performance, and the feminine gaze with both reverence and resistance. The Women become conduits for reflections on beauty, agency, and self-mythology, as Chaturvedi uses the material of velvet to create sensorial tensions of color and light that regard perfection, safety,
spectacle, touch, and legacy of the cinematic Woman. Chaturvedi will received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2025. Her recent exhibitions include No, Painting Baby at Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI (2025); The Big Fat South Asian Show, which she also curated, at the RISDMuseum (2025); (Ec)static Parade (2025), Landscape As and After Dinner Coffee at RISD Memorial Hall Gallery (2024); and Kahaani, Brown University, Providence, RI (2023). and the group exhibition LOOK at Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2025).