Biography
Anju Dodiya is a painter whose visual language emerges from a variety of references spanning the history of painting, across eastern and western cultures, from Indian miniatures to French medieval tapestries, often interweaving elements of autobiography, allegory and mythology. Primarily working in watercolour, Dodiya expands the techniques and applications of her medium by upholstering her surfaces, providing a distinctive tactile quality to her paintings as both images and objects. By expanding on themes of domesticity, femininity and cultural specificity, the artist situates her work between a celebration and critique of the history of women in the domestic sphere.
Dodiya’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including Anatomy of a Flame, Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, London (2022); Tower of Slowness, Galerie Templon, Brussels (2021); Breathing On Mirrors, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2020); The Air is a Mill of Hooks, Vadehra Art Gallery, Defence Colony, New Delhi (2018); How to be Brave (in pictures), Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris (2016); and Imagined Immortals, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2015). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions, such as Woman is As Woman Does, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai (2022); Visions from India, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina (2020); Every Soiled Page, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2020); Fracture/Fiction: Selection from the ILHAM Collection, ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2019); Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala (2019); Connecting Threads: Textiles in Contemporary Practice, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018); No Parsi is an Island, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2016); Throne of Frost, the Laxmi Villas Palace, Baroda (2007); and Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice (2009).
Her work can be found in the collections worldwide, including Burger Collection, Hong Kong; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Mumbai; Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Art Institute of Chicago; and Tate Modern, London.
She received a BFA from Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai (1986).
Dodiya was born in 1964 in Mumbai, where she currently lives and works.
SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023)
