Code

About Artist

Painting, Performance, New Media, Installation Bio: Born in 1982, raised around Bombay-Thane, Priyadarshini Ohol entered the arts full time after a ski accident and surgery equipped with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and experience in business and high impact socio-political activism. Post recuperation, Ohol spent years in her Himalayan studio in Dharamshala, establishing an influential, independent, avant garde practice which finds expression in painting, performance, video, performative painting, butoh, poetry, articles, interdisciplinary immersive installations, experimental and collaborative works. This examination and transformation of misery, fate, human experience into thriving life rooted in radical self care, scientific inquiry, authenticity, freedom, play is at the core of her art practice. Ohol’s sensitive multilayered performances play with perceptions, challenge norms and change art landscapes. Derivatives of her work appear, the subjects she examines and the language find their way into variegated vocabularies. Yet, her abstract expressionist canvases clearly indicate her irreverence for categories betraying a fierce need for artistic freedom. She says her work includes stream of consciousness art, yet given it’s reflexive dynamism, it is best described by the term agile art. Ohol’s is a complex social practice examining the self in relation to the world, equality, exclusion, inclusion, identity, belonging, dehumanization, discrimination, casteism, freedom, sexuality, gender, feminism, possession, dispossession, ethics, classism, displacement, fraternity, regional and global politics, the politics of locations of the body, the meaning of art, possibilities of artistic cultural impact and artivism in an increasingly changing, conflict ridden, technologically driven, globalized, fragmented world. Search the name for video interviews and press coverage. In the artists words: "My art is for The Fearless, The Flamboyant, The Rebellious, The Non-Conformists, The Doers, Makers, Go Getters,The Shockers, The Shakers, The Game Changers, The Changemakers, The Kind & Gentle with that shade of Iconoclast-ism. I would like to see my art close to such beings with drive, passion, courage, guts, sass, moods, emotions, life. Everything I do, I do to leave behind a legacy. At some level I know that I was born to be a star. There is no other reason why I should have lived the life I lived and survive. So everything I do turns to gold. My art affects people. It brings about a change in state. I make it to shake you, move you, jolt you, calm you, soothe you, anger you, connect with you, stay in your head, make you do something. I'd like to die a polymath so I try very hard to get there. I believe in one life & I want to do everything to the fullest extent in one lifetime. Artist, Activist, Actor, Adventurer. When I am doing none of that which I deem worthy, I like to vegetate instead. Art is a way for me to do something larger than one life, to leave behind a legacy, to bring about change, to express, to be free, to stay sane. I'm inspired by nature. My earliest memory of this is sitting outside, looking at the Gulmohar trees caressed by the winds, dreaming, and then running inside to write a poetry about it. I pursue art full time since a ski accident requiring surgery. I also run up and down the Dharamshala hills and participate in marathons. It used to take me an hour to cross a room after surgery and I spent a lot of time on my back. That's what motivates my skyscapes. Looking at the beauty of the sky while being on my back. I like everything to be useful, to feed into some universal symbiotic cycle. I use my life experience of overcoming a difficult childhood and incredible socio-economic odds, being a Model, studying Mechanical Engineering, being an Activist, a Businesswoman, flirting with politics, overcoming adversities like changes due to the accident, travelling, people, emotions in my art. People ask me why I didn't pursue politics. I answer that I was not ready emotionally or temperamentally. How could I be free to create explore, to travel, to create and be if I live one persona? Just like the multiple me's my art is of multiple styles and subjects. I don't know if I will ever settle down into one style, one type, one subject. To me, doing the same thing, over and over again, is a waste of time, a waste of life. And my art is my life on canvas.I have designed my life and trained my brain with great pain. People say my art is happy and colourful. It is so because without that outlook, I wouldn't survive. Moving to Dharamshala has made me and my art free, just to be. I like the arts and literature and adventure sports and interesting people and travelling and changing the world and living a life less ordinary.