Quick Facts
Biography
Yamini Nayar (born 1975) is a visual artist working between New York and Delhi. Her work is part of the collection of the Guggenhiem Museum in New York City, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Saatchi Collection, the Art Institue of Chicago, and the US Department of State Art in Embassies collection.
Education
Nayar received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island. Nayar is a recipient of the Lightborne Fellowship, Aaron Siskind Fellowship and an Art Matters Foundation grant.
Works
Nayor creates large-scale photographs from sculptures constructed from found materials. After the construction is documented with a large-format camera, they are destroyed leaving only the photographic evidence. Her works intersect photography, sculpture and architecture, with projects exploring postcolonial narratives, memory, migration, informal architecture and dwellings, modernist architecture, and alternate and imagined modernities. She has been likened to a "tripped-out version of Samuel van Hoogstraten"and also compared to German artist Thomas Demand.
Nayar's work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Hindu, and Artforum. Her work has been described both as exhibiting "a painstaking attention to detail" in certain pieces, and in others portraying a "sense of chaos."Nayar’s photographs are as much about the psychological as physical space. Her work explores the "relationship between memory and architecture while establishing a tension between the remembered and the real." Her photographs have been described as providing "a topography of the mind itself."
Selected Exhibitions [5]
2019
If stone could give, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco
2018
Peckham 24, London
What’s essential, Jahaveri Contemporary
Aspirational Architectures, Fridman Galley
2017
Crash, Dig, Dwell, Jahaveri Contemporary
Archival Alchemy, Abrons Arts Center
2016
Unsuspending Disbelief, Logan Center Gallery
2015
Constructs/Construction, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
A Room of One's Own, Yancy Richardson
2013
an axe for a wingbone, Thomas Erben, New York
2011
Thomas Erben Gallery, NY
2010
Lightborne Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum and Art Academy of Cincinnati
2011
School of Visual Arts, SVA Notable Female Alumni
Collectors Guide, Volume 2, Chelsea Art Museum
Moving Index, ArtOffice.org
Manual For Treason, Sharjah Biennial
2010
Object Lessons, New York Photography Festival
The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Conspiracy’ with Raqs Media Collective and Susanta Mandal, Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata, India
Hong Kong Art fair, Hong Kong, Japan
Punctum II, Lakeeren Gallery, Mumbai, India
31 Women in Art Photography, Humble Arts Foundation
Bring Me A Lion, Webster University, MO
Accented, Bric Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2009
NADA Art Fair, Yamini Nayar, New Works
Thomas Erben Gallery, NY, Arrested Views
Galerie Anne Barrault, France
Grey Noise Gallery, Pakistan, Good Looking
2008
Scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland, By All Means
Stephen Stux Gallery, New York, Firewalkers
Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FA, Exploding the Lotus
Thomas Erben, New York, First Left, Second Right
ExitArt, New York, Spring Auction
2007
ExitArt, New York, Sultana’s Dream
Gallerie Barry Keldoulis, Australia, The Devotee Exhausts the Forces of Activity
Rush Arts Gallery, New York – Art for Life Auction – East Hampton Benefit
Queens Museum, New York, Erasing Borders
2006
Bose Pacia Modern, New York ‘Yamini Nayar and Shreshta Premnath’
Onishi Gallery, New York, The Kayu Project
Kiana Malakzadeh Gallery, New York, This One Time
BosePacia (25), New York, Friends of Fulbright India Auction
2005
Queens Museum of Art, New York Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now
Prerana Reddy
Rush Arts Gallery, New York, More or Less, Generation Meaning Through Process
Studio Museum of Harlem, NY hrlm: pictures – video installation;
PH Gallery, New York, Empire’s Feast
2004
Gallery Arts India, New York, Territories
PS 122, NY, 'Blow the Conch
2003
Bose Pacia, New York, Through Customs
Rye Center, New York
2002
313 Gallery, New York, Black Tea
Interart Annex, New York, Women in Wartime
Society for Ethical Culture, New York
1999
Woods-Gerry Gallery, RI RISD Graduation Invitational
RISD Red-Eye Gallery, RI, Thesis Exhibition, Detroit