Venue : India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

 

Exhibition Dates : 2nd to 4th Jan 2016

 

Theme/inspiration behind the exhibition :

Science and Art are considered polar opposites, irreconcilably divorced from each other; this binary separation is stifling, limiting the possibilities of artist-scientists who could be the future inventors of something revolutionary. The artist, Michelle Oraa Ali, aims to draw on her ongoing training and education in neuroscience and genetics to frame scientific concepts in an artistic context to show that science needn’t be confined to textbooks and laboratories which reek of formaldehyde. Through watercolour and acrylic paintings created over the course of the last five years, this exhibition explores similar artificially constructed binaries and attempts to challenge them. In doing so, the artist’s work seeks to ask why we perpetuate binaries when we can dismantle them to build something beautiful and meaningful from the very parts used to separate them.

 

Artist Profile :

Michelle Oraa Ali is an Indo-Filipino self-taught artist who is currently a junior Neuroscience and Behaviour major with a minor in Graphic Narrative and Visual Storytelling at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA. She is passionate about neuroaesthetics, the intersection of art, aesthetics and brain science, and endeavors to pursue this interest artistically, academically and professionally.

 

Michelle had her first solo exhibition, “More Than Meets the Eye”, at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi in 2007. She had been a part of group exhibitions in India and abroad including Bienal Izmir, “International Izmir Modern Arts”, Turkey (2011), and Biennale di Chianciano 2009, “International Exhibition of Contemporary Arts”, Italy (2009) where she was given “Special Jury Award for Young Talent”. She was also part of the Exhibition cum Charity Auction "Art for Aged" for HelpAge India (2008).