"Everything is connected. If you pull on one thread within the fabric, everything else unravels very quickly." (click on image or title to read more)
Nandita Mukand's practice is concerned with how urbanization with it's attendant lifestyle choices continuously changes us as individuals, and by extension, changes us as individuals, and by extension, transforms the collective psyche of our world. (click on image or title to read more)
Step into The Private Museum in Waterloo Street and you will be greeted by the curious sight of brown "vessels" suspended from the ceiling or resting on the floor.
They seem organic, almost nest-like, but get closer and their devious architecture - hollow structures fashioned from thousands of coniferous seeds held together by wire - have a clearly man-made imprint.
The idea for Empty Vessels, one of a dozen artworks now on display at the two-woman show From Lost Roots To Urban Meadows, was sown in the mind of Singapore-based artist Nandita Mukand three years ago when she was walking through a forest in Spain. Mukand, who was then on an arts residency in the north-eastern region of Catalonia, spotted cypress seeds on the forest floor. (click on image or title line to read more)
“CITY LIFE YIELDS CHOICES THAT CHANGE US, WEAVING AN URBAN VEIL THAT THICKENS; WE NO LONGER SEE OURSELVES AS PART OF THE NATURAL WORLD.”
The typescript imprinted on a wall of The Private Museum was attributed as a quote to Nandita Mukand, one of two artists behind the museum’s latest exhibition, ‘From Lost Roots to Urban Meadows’. (click on image or title line to read more)
Singapore-based artist Nandita Mukand’s solo show Mind(less) Wilderness offers a masterclass in understanding the dividing lines between sculpture and paintings.
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But the main feature was the newer wall sculptural works which are more complex and more chaotic to represent decay and the way nature and the urban mix. Also she showed larger free standing sculptural works.
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Nandita was educated in Lucknow, India and graduated as an electronics engineer. After enjoying a successful career at Proctor & Gamble, she decided to become a full time artist about ten years ago. In 2014 she graduated at the top of her year with a first class BA Honours in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College of Art, London, via LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. Nandita’s work encompasses sculpture, installation and paintings, exploring the recurring themes of nature, materiality, spirituality and connection within an urban environment. She has shown her work in Australia, Spain and at Sweden’s biennale. She has also had several high profile collaborations and solo shows in Singapore.
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Nandita Mukand talks with us about her second solo exhibition “Forest Weft, City Warp”, which is currently showing at One East Asia as part of Singapore Art Week. Mukand discusses her meditations on nature as a city-dweller, how flora inspires her work, and how she visually expresses the continual changes that occur in life, death and decay.
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Nandita was featured previously in a February 2017 post. We liked her works then and these are even better. She did more sculptural works to hang on the wall, a table top sculptural work which was placed on a mirror surface (to good effect) and a few flatter works.
The works are really excellent! Definitely an improvement from the works which she showed at OneEast Asia earlier in the year and captures / expresses her artist statement really well.
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Translation from Swedish "...Perhaps then, as with Indian artist Nandita Mukand who urged the public to donate dried plants and flowers, which she then built a kind of hanging memory chapel of. The catalog tells about one of the gift givers who contributed with aged birthday bouquets and their own bridal bouquet to the artwork (in Artstation)."
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"The first shown work is by Nandita Mukand from Singapore and consists of dried flowers. A work for which openart had gotten help from the people of örebro to gather the material."
"...Nandita Mukand’s oil and varnish works flanked the right. Form and colour are experimented with here, with the colours sprawling, even almost dripping, across their chosen mediums..."
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"...She is an alumna of the reputed Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Before that she also has a degree in Electronics Engineering. She moved to Singapore 12 years ago when she was offered a job with Proctor & Gamble..."
Forest Weft, City Warp 2017, Write up by Amelia Abdullahsani
Mind(less) Wilderness 2019. Write up by Tanya Amador