About
Born in India Visual and Performance artist Vanshika Agrawal has a background in green and sustainable design. Working across different mediums like drawing, painting, installations, performance, poetry and photography, she finds a balance between material and immaterial, the spatial relation with the body through embodiment. She holds an MFA in Painting from Rome University of Fine Arts with her thesis on ephemerality (defining a relationship between art and poetry). She has co-performed with performance artists Emily Mast and Florence Peake and has worked with Serbian artist Marta Jovanovic`. Currently, she is an Associate Editor at Planted Journal while developing her practice based in Rome. Her previous expositions include Palazzo Ducale for Lucca Biennale Cartasia 2022, Lucca, La Nuova Pesa and Maja Arte Contemporanea, Rome. She has been a part of AAIE’s many exhibits like Il Decameron 2021, Roma Art Week 2021, Abitudine Artistica Ideologia Eccellente 2022 and Rivers and Roads: Meandering Storied of India 2022, and showcased her photography work at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, on cultural and natural heritage of immigration in Italy.
Accounting the visible and invisible world to connect things in a specific way, to make sense of the equilibrium between knowing and not knowing. Her work examines the alert consciousness of the past to understand and represent the present in a constant dialogue with the human experience recorded in the past as emotions can never be merely preserved but must be always rediscovered. Talking about duality and fragility of the changing world, by working among a plurality of cultural signs. It deals with immaterial, movement, and existence of the body in its immediate surroundings. Embodied gestures to trigger, open up layers of sensation and create memories to revisit the instants. Presenting ephemeral between time and space composed with delicacy and intimacy.
Focusing on retrieving the traces of yesterday she uses culturally shaped rituals in performance art, to shape mundane. In its continuous transformation, the mundane becomes sacred, resonating with life in the awareness of our transience. By analysing the old behavioural approaches give way to shape new concepts. Examining further her paintings and leporellos are atmospheres or as she defines Nuances of belonging and longing. Weaving together the geographies of space, time, culture and human experiences which are enmeshed in our very lives to combine our physical traces and acknowledge the intermingling of concepts.
Exhibitons
2023
Dake Museum of Art, collective exhibition, Chengdu, China
Tra Loro, solo show, Galleria GSL, San Lorenzo, Rome
Kunstresidenz Exhibitions at Kraftwerk, Bad Gastein, Austria
2022
Rivers and Roads, Meandering Stories of India, AAIE Art Center for Contemporary Art, Rome
Vicino/ Lontano at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, promoted by the Italian National Commission for UNESCO
Co-performed Interior Pull by Florence Peake at Forof, Rome produced in partnership with Richard Saltoun Gallery
0 to 0 at AAIE Art Center for Contemporary Art, Rome
Abitudine Artistica Ideologia Eccellente, AAIE Art Center for Contemporary Art, Rome
Lucca Biennale Cartasia, Indoor, Lucca, curated by Giacomo Pecchia
Accade, La Nuova Pesa, Rome, curated by Andrea Aquilanti and Fabrizio Pizzuto
Co-performed IFIF Performance by Emily Mast, Villa Medici, Rome, curated by Julie Pelligrini
Just Ignore It (solo show), Maja Arte Contemporanea, Rome, curated by Marta Jovanovic`
Ladispolaneamente, collective exhibition, Ladispoli, curated by Elisa Selli
Because I Could not stop for Death, double exhibition, RUFA Space, Rome
2021
Grace Before The End, at ROMA ART WEEK, sixth edition (25-30 October)
Grace Before The End, AAIE Art Center for Contemporary Art, Rome
D31 Online Summer Exhibition, Doncaster, UK
Totems of a collective narrative, collective exhibition, RUFA Space, Rome
Performance Cluster, collective exhibition, RUFA Space, Rome
Sacrality, a collaborative site-specific installation, collective exhibition, RUFA Space
27Art Point, Amritsar, India
2020 - 2019
27Art Point, Amritsar, India