Between Dimensions
The work of Nibha Akireddy is anything but fixed in place. The Santa Clara California-based oil painter’s impasto-rich, buzzing portraits and explorations run wild with movement and imagery. What’s more, Akrireddy is an effortless communicator through painting of multiple realities and of relationships between the self and the outside. As an artist traveling between dimensions of the surreal and the all-too familiar, Akireddy sees clearly the limitations which complacency and static holds on identity can bring about. Wherever the artist’s images wander, they never cease to take their audience exactly where they need to go; somewhere thought-provoking, alive, and evolving . Nibha Akireddy is an artist whose work weaves in and out of convention and above all, beyond labels.
Part One: Who is Nibha Akireddy?
Question One: Who are you?
“I’m currently a student based in California’s Bay Area, studying Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Though I’m not working towards an art degree, my artistic practice is inextricably woven into all the work I do and the way I relate to the world both inside and outside of the studio. I’ve been making art for most of my life and have recently begun to dive into painting more seriously after a considerable hiatus.”
Question Two: Who are you as an artist?
I love working with tensions in my art. Surrealism, diasporic art, abstracted compositions all lie in these gray areas between worlds that I find fascinating. Even technically, I like to play with realism vs. abstraction, distorting colors and form, and exploring the friction between a hard line and a soft form. A lot of my work is inspired by the communities I surround myself with and the people who inspire me artistically, whether or not they consider themselves artists. I’m in this period of my life where my worldviews are constantly being upended and shaped by the people I surround myself with, and I use my art to let myself sit in that and appreciate it. Isolation has given me a unique opportunity in that, without being surrounded by people I can use for reference, I’ve been doing a lot of self portraits for the first time in my life.
Question Three: What has the process of making art taught you or given you?
“There’s definitely a set of liberties that I’m afforded being an artist working outside the confines of formal art schooling or the pressures that come with a full-time artistic career. I like to think that that freedom pushes me to reflect a lot on my artistic education and the voices that have been left out — the voices I’ve ignored until very recently.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the way POC artists are really tokenized and exoticized in the art world. South Asian art is marked by historical disruption (outside rule, colonialism, Partition), giving rise to an incredible history of artistic development and expression. But Western museums really only collect ancient art and artifacts. The same, more or less, is true of so many African, Indigenous, and Asian cultures and traditions. The world sees these cultures through the lens of art from literally centuries ago, expecting POC artists to, somehow and for some reason, pay tribute to those images. Modern diasporic art, in its most popular forms, seems to highlight an aesthetic of beautiful designs and embroidery and jewelry that still feels like it caters to a Western audience and dilutes the diversity within cultural labels like “South Asian”. I’m interested in exploring the images that feel most true to my own experiences and in learning from artists of all kinds working to complicate monolithic ideas of what diasporic art looks like.“
Part Two: Defying Dimension
What is your artistic practice?
My work mostly involves human subjects. I work with portraiture and the human form, trying to create movement and texture with paint.
12″x12″
oil on wood
2020
This piece was the first of a series of self portraits during lockdown. It started as a journalistic piece about being isolated in my family home under strange circumstances, taking online classes and staying indoors but later evolved into a piece about my relationship with my own name. One of my professors, an Indian professor, pronounced my name correctly, with the full body of the “bha” syllable. I hadn’t heard a teacher pronounce my name correctly since middle school, and the novelty of it was strange in itself. My internal relationship with my name is also in conversation with the way I pronounce it every day, the way others pronounce it, and in the way it’s a part of my identity.
24″x36″
oil on wood
2020
The second of my self portraits, this painting was another journalistic piece, a surreal exploration of a daily routine, of washing my hair as little as possible, supplemented by my go-to dry shampoo.
16″x12″
oil on canvas
2020
This piece is inspired by Indian miniature paintings and my haircare routine
diptych, two 12″x12″
oil on wood panel pieces
2020
This diptych is inspired by “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. Racial hatred, both internalized and societal, can be examined through grotesque beauty standards that affect myriad cultures. A beauty standard is so superficial and can feel like an individual problem but holds so much underlying hatred and repulsive sentiment within it. The eyelids are tugged and pulled and stretched, bloodshot and frantic as they transition from dark brown to blue. The blue eyes are piercing in their artificial iciness, anything but beautiful.
| Where/ How can Vacant Museum viewers see more of your work and where can they purchase it? |
| I post all my work on my Instagram (instagram.com/nibhaakireddy), and put works for sale on BigCartel (nibhaakireddy.bigcartel.com). I can only put a limited number of products up at a time on BigCartel, but my Instagram DM’s are open for inquiries about purchases on any of my works or for commissions. |