Nature Shankar

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

My practice builds upon the belief that the body holds emotional memory—generational, personal, communal, cultural, and political—and that these embedded experiences continually reshape the frameworks through which we form identity and make meaning: how we see and feel the world. I attempt to reclaim agency over these embodied frameworks by unearthing embodied memory and emotion through my making process. I adopt tactile, craft-oriented techniques—paper-making, embroidery, textile collage—to reacquaint the self with the body as a conscious, meaning-making entity that mediates experience. My touch-heavy, experimentally driven process blends material manipulation and mark-making in the spirit of abstraction. Abstraction’s boundless capacity serves to shift focus from the observable to the inward, felt reality—centering embodied knowledge outside overarching systems. In doing so, I hope to contextualize our relationship to presence, existence, the self, and one another—especially where these experiences resist dominant cultural narratives. From friction-full gestures—pulping, ripping, rubbing—to meditative actions—embroidering, dyeing, collaging—each stage of making is a site of intimate transformation. Stains and fragments merge over time, allowing emotionally charged narratives to simmer to the surface. Beyond the meaning-making mechanism(s) behind eyes, between ears and all our nerves, I am informed by craft theory, embodiment theory, psychology, neuroplasticity, Eastern...

Artwork