Tarini Sethi works across mediums, with rich
drawing and painting practices that she then translates into stunning
large metal works. Across her practices, Tarini creates her own language
of futurism,
imagining the body as a site of infinite possibility.



Challenging the normative standards of
form and gender, Tarini’s figures reflect utopian worlds where bodily
structures are malleable and fluid. Tarini is interested in the blurring
of boundaries,
between erotic and abject, human and non human, creating a world that’s
ultimately defined by love and acceptance. Her work responds to the
culture of sexual repression and gender inequality she encounters in
India, creating universes that dare to imagine
otherwise.



Tarini’s aesthetic practice draws upon
the deep world of Indian art history, referencing various schools of
painting in her signature compositions. Her metal works translate the
two dimensional
works into immersive experiences, where light and shadow are as much a
medium as metal itself.

Tarini Sethi (b 1987, India) creates work that focuses on
themes of world building, mythology, folk stories, dream worlds and
sexual emancipation. Created in direct response to my understanding of
declining mental health, skepticism of current political discourse,
dread of communalism, and distress at the destruction of the natural
world, I attempt to make art that defies these realities. Her subjects
–some quite human, some quite animal, but none clearly one or the other –
fight and ponder, observe and converse, love and luxuriate, often
within labyrinthine physical spaces and multi limbed anthropomorphic
anatomies. In this world, bodies are freed from the ideas attached to
the conventional notion of gender, perfection and beauty. As a woman
from India, existing in a space of extreme sexual oppression, and
constant scrutiny, I try to focus as much as possible on the idea that
bodies can exist as perfect vessels for exploration, action and sexual
emancipation. Taking cues from a range of artistic practices spanning
the length of the subcontinent, specifically Kalighat, Miniature, Kavad
and Tholu Bommalata, she uses these themes and ideas to bring my utopia
to life. These themes are explored through a multimedia practice that
includes paintings, drawings, and metal sculptures. Sethi currently
lives in New Delhi, India.