geetha thurairajah: Mingling with flowers panthers’ eyes

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geetha thurairajah, "Mingling with flowers panthers’ eyes," 2017

Main Space Exhibition / geetha thurairajah

Mingling with the flowers panthers' eyes

Exhibition runs April 7 - May 13

Opening Reception April 7, 8PM

geetha thurairajah’s paintings are theatrical spaces where multiple expressions of identity perform in a single act. Existing between the digital and physical, her paintings employ abstraction and allegory in order to reflect the irony, complexity and confusion of a diasporic experience.

Virtual reality is mimicked within thurairajah’s paintings as visual referents deny the boundaries of time and space while occupying nondescript spaces. The symbols of an absent Sri Lankan heritage appear next to images stolen from painting’s history. Abstracted forms guide viewers through artificial realities. It is thurairajah’s intention to create stages that invite spectators in as performers through first-person viewpoints while still reminding viewers of their gaze. Believable forms and spaces are shattered when the boundaries of the painting’s surface become a pictorial ledge or an expressive application of paint becomes a plant.

thurairajah’s painting process begins with digital drawings created on a tablet. These drawings are then rendered into physical paintings using traditional painting techniques as well as technology like the airbrush. The motivation behind her process is to create paintings that exist in a state of inbetweeness, somewhere between the digital and physical, the abstracted and representational.