Via Negative, 2000-2006 - Anita Dube

Art historian and critic Anita Dube first began to create art of her own as a result of her association with a group of radical artists from Baroda in the 1980s. The Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association first emerged after a series of anti-Muslim riots that critiqued the social and political structure of India. Dube’s work, which, at the time, was primarily concerned with the human body and its properties, took on a new political form. Symbols important to the religion of Hinduism such as the upside-down “Tree of Life” began to take precedence in Dube’s work. Over the past thirty years, Dube’s work has addressed issues of mortality, desire, pain and joy.

Dube's work draws upon not only the present, but also the historical and the mythological. She works in a variety of materials, evoking industrial structures through foam, plastic, and wire, the realm of crafts with thread, beads, and velvet, and the human body through pieces using bone.

She has exhibited internationally at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the Yokohama Triennale, the Havana Biennale, as well as at galleries throughout India and Europe. Read Less