Artist and instructor Shalu Juneja’s ‘Zoom’ is a instructor’s perspective on digital lessons
An artwork work on the wall, a household {photograph} with faces which have grown acquainted by now, a cat or the shadow of a human… such sights provided artist and instructor Shalu Juneja a peek into her college students’ private areas, because of digital lessons. She discovered herself observing little particulars that nearly started to outline the areas she noticed on display every single day. Her current collection, ‘Zoom’, is a instructor’s perspective on digital actuality.
As the co-director and founding father of Uno Lona Academy for arts primarily based in Ahmedabad, Shalu says her connection to her college students was one in all physicality that existed inside an area. “Online classes changed the dynamics. Through these small windows, our personal spaces are revealed in seemingly distorted perspectives. As discomforting as it is, it creates a sense of voyeuristic intrigue,” she says.
A piece from the ‘Zoom’ collection
Born and raised in Chennai, Shalu moved to Ahmedabad after marriage in 1989 the place she lives and works. She co-founded the artwork academy in 2016 along with her son and artist Harsimran Juneja and began educating in 2019. “I often feel the line between teaching and learning is blurred. I believe teaching is the best form of learning,” she says. Though she works throughout media, Shalu is drawn to ceramic sculptures and murals.
“During lockdown days, there I was peeping into private spaces — lifestyles, walls, windows, patterns, objects, and sometimes glimpses of people who walked past or lurked behind as shadows. I had become what a spirit would be. So close, yet so far… There but not quite,” she provides.
‘Zoom’ is an summary collection of three work completed in oil and combined media, the place she employs a masking approach utilizing indigo water, rust, earth, thread and different items of scrap. It is an extension of her ongoing collection known as ‘Body Language’ that removes the shape, but explores the connection between the sensible and the summary. ‘Body Language’ has 25 to 30 works that concentrate on the feminine entity — eyes, faces, stomach, the umbilical twine — juxtaposed with Nature.
Artist Shalu Juneja
“I think I get carried away by this kind of texturing. It is the connection I feel with the earth. Wet mud in splashes of sienna, a sense of erosion created by thread, patterns formed by organisms in rust marks, and the scorching earth represented as burn marks on skin calmed by the smoothness of indigo,” says Shalu.
Shalu believes that although college students and artwork academics miss the inventive power of a studio atmosphere, the lockdown has been an inspiring time for artists. “There is a change happening, politically, culturally and socially. The idea is to keep working every day, I tell my students.”
She can also be impressed by poetry or lyrics of songs she typically writes. She has accomplished a collection of water color sketches and ceramic sculptures primarily based on her romantic poem, “Moon within the Lotus Pond’.
