Remen Chopra W. Van Der Vaart (b. 1980, New Delhi)
Trained at the School of Visual Art (USA) Van Der Vaart first exhibited her work 23 years ago at Bodhi Art gallery, Mumbai, followed by an exhibition curated by Franceso Poli at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi and Spazio Guicciardini in Milan. In 2016, she participated in the 55th Venice Biennale, ‘We have arrived nowhere’ with the curator Sumesh Sharma and Zasha Colah of Clark House, Mumbai. In the same year she presented her work in Kochi Biennale, Biennale Dolomiti and at the Essl Museum, Vienna, which is now part of the permanent collection of the museum. The Gujral Foundation hosted her solo exhibition ‘Memory’s cut, its deep embrace’ (2020) and 1x1 Gallery, Dubai hosted ‘In these verses I find Home’ (2022). The artist lives in Delhi.
Van der Vaart works with photography, drawings, sculpture, text, textile and sound to reflect upon intergenerational subjects such migration and time. Her poetic approach to exploring the notion of home investigates her cultural past. Exploring identity, cultural landscapes and relic objects she draws from the cartography of memory to create narratives of fragility, preservation and regeneration. In some of her works repetition acts as a method of understanding the movement of time.
The fragrant patterns observe how the concept of home—a complex and multi-layered idea—is intimately tied to both personal and collective histories. Having moved between many homes, the artist began to question the complex theme of "what is home?" Through these works, she attempts to understand the significance of home and how landscape, place, maps, poetry, and physical objects contribute to its construction.
Symmetry acts as a coexistence of the old and new, exploring symbols and lines that speak of continuity, change, and return. The works open a dialogue between generations, with a constant interplay between the photographed and drawn images.