Udita Upadhyaya

Uncertain States

​

Uncertain States is an ongoing series of ink drawings.

​

These process based ink drawings reach into my training in Vipassana meditation, carefully embracing error and the trepidation of walking on foreign land, here in the United States, in 2018. The work arises from a personal outrage at . Pools of ink spills are layered over each other, they collide and intersect periodically even as cross-sections are cut out of the works of paper. Created with floods of fantastical colors, the inks drawings alternately echo cartography and the landscape of the human interior mind and body.

The work’s focus on land ranges from a simple outrage at our need, as humans, to control, possess, and fight over space creating walls and borders, shunning others. Given that the fight for freedom and land in my home country, India, is only 70 years old, I also recognize this as a craving for home and certainty to find reprieve in turbulent contemporary political climate.

The existing drawings are in varying sizes, ranging from 11 inches by 25 inches to 72 inches by 48 inches. The work is always created on the ground owing to its dialogue with gravity, the scale of the larger works, and how my body (and the viewer’s body) negotiates the work. Some of the larger work the paper intersects each other, literally overlapping sheets of paper building layers, and collaging shapes adding another dimension to the drawings. 

​

Most recently work from this series has been exhibited at the following shows:

Tip of My Tongue, at Weinberg Newton Gallery, Chicago, IL

The Art of Being Dangerous, at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL and

The Dangerous Professors, at Triumph Gallery, Chicago, IL

​

​