About the Artist

Puja Mondal

Based in Vadodara, painter Puja Mondal (b. 1994) draws on her immediate surroundings to create a poignant series of works. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Nilima Sheikh, Benode Behari Mukherjee, and Anselm Kiefer, Mondal creates paintings that talk of loss, isolation, and nostalgia. Her early work Monologue of Spaces (2015-16), is a series of 12 paintings of her college that mark a moment of unease and fear when her campus was abandoned due to the unrest caused by fundamentalist groups. In Life In and Out of Campus (2016-17) Mondal takes cues from Benode Behari Mukherjee’s mural ‘Life in a Campus’. She also references Murakami’s book Norwegian Wood to portray her own experience as a student living through social unrest and citizenry action. Recently, Mondal has begun to look beyond paper, using plaster and terracotta tiles as surfaces for her artworks. The text and detailed narratives in her work focus on the issue of social fracture.