Goa-based artist Shailee Mehta similarly employs an exaggerated depiction of the body in her distinct figurative style. Her practice explores otherness through the depiction of exoticized, hybridized bodies. Her figures challenge entrenched binaries–human and animal, nature and civilization, attraction and abjection–and provide a new visual language for thinking about differences of gender and culture.

Shailee’s work reimagines the aesthetics of exoticism, creating worlds that are alluring, but threatening, languid but fraught. There is an otherworldly quality to her paintings, rooted in elements of familiarity and specificity. Her figures’ long limbs and expressive color seem to signal their otherness. But their respectively serene and engaging expressions, coupled with their evocative postures, remind us of their deep humanity. Shailee’s depicts the other in new terms that force us to recognize our commonalities.