Biography

My name is Baishakhi Mehatori. I graduated from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati in Santiniketan, West Bengal, with a BFA in painting in 2014 and a MFA in painting the same institution in 2016. Then I moved to Dehradun where I am presently employed as an art teacher and also, I work as a freelance artist. My artwork has been displayed for exhibition both domestically and overseas from 2011 to 2023 and also I have taken part in both national and international art workshops. 

I was honored by merit awards from Santiniketan and Certificate of Recognition for Painting Kalanand Grant Program.

Artist Statement

My works mostly focus on the various individuals' life journeys, through which certain moments and milestones have been provided that are assisting us in leading our lives. The component of human behavior that I attempt to examine in my work has always been an inspiration to me. They represent a person's engagement with their environment and circumstances across a span of time and space, as well as a deeper emotional state of mind. Thus, they go beyond depicting a momentary reaction and become symbolic metaphor for an extended life's journey of the person.

People have historically moved and migrated in groups in search of work, better living conditions, etc. But today migration has become a very political term and unpopular discourse human migration in large numbers are mainly discussed either in the context of daily wage labourers or refugees. However, there is not much talk about urban migration. Generally migration or movement is a very human condition. I being an urban migrant I can resonate with the idea of the duality of the sense of place that migrants (especially for work) implicitly entail. The sense of place works on many levels with the impression of home (a place of safety and familiarity) that gets reflected in other spaces but at the same time which  get controlled and manipulated with external factors too.

Thus, migration symbolizing the journey of a person’s life and circumstances became a central theme of investigation in my work. In my work this journey was depicted through some moments and some steps that reflected the desire for home. Thus every day we set a new target that would bring us one step closer.

In this journey of life, we keep assessing our selves in each step. Sometimes we are successful in such assessment but sometimes we are not. Often when we come across something new that may be a new idea or a new thought; we try to mold our selves accordingly. So I have used patterns in my works as metaphors of those ideas and thoughts. We do not know if we will be successful or not but we still carry on. To fit ourselves with the mold or to adhere to circumstances that are often imposed, we continuously shape ourselves accordingly.

In these series of works I have tried to express my own experiences and their relationship with the conditions of the outside world and during the covid pandemic every one has had to adjust to a new way of life. 

In this first painting I tried to portray my own experiences of being a teacher and adjusting to this new situation that we were all plunged into. As a teacher we couldn’t teachin classrooms any more. The whole process of teaching acquired a new format all over the world. For me it was personally challenging to teach young kids a subject like art over the internet which inherently is a very physical process. It was a difficult task to translate the materiality of an artistic process onto a screen. Thus this painting tries to encapsulate that feeling of constantly being in front of my computer, being stressed from over work and at the same time working in a condition of isolation.

In the second painting I tried to reflect on myself and my relationship with the society that I live in. The place where I come from and the place where I work are very far away from each other and very different. My home is in a village and I work in a city. I have realisedthat I unconsciously adjust myself according to the place where I am. This made me think if people see me not as myself but as they want to see me or is it that I am not myself in any situation but act according to the social rules of that place. This makes me wonder if there is only a particular version of ourselves or multiple version of ourselves that we unconsciously embody.

Artworks