August 2018
Does A Dead Leaf Need Mending?
Alpana Vij is a contemporary artist based in Singapore. Her practice employs painting, found objects, photography and video to explore themes of perception and what constitutes ‘objective reality’.
She is inspired by the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā or emptiness that focuses on the transitory and ephemeral nature and interconnectedness of all phenomena. She seeks to use her ritualized and meditative art making as a reflexive process to question and understand these teachings and to create immersive experiences that poetically engage the viewer in a dialogue.
Alpana graduated with a BFA from College of Art, New Delhi and received an MFA from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. She is also deeply involved in bringing art to the community and has initiated and participated in various projects in Singapore and India.
Alpana has shown her works at several solo and group shows. Her works are in private collections in Singapore, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and India.
Alpana's experiments for the month
For the month of August, Alpana will be creating rituals around collecting, drying, sorting and then mending dried and torn leaves with gold thread.
She will also be incorporating gold thread and mulberry paper in the process of creating Joomchi (an ancient, Korean paper-making technique). These processes take inspiration from the 500-year-old Japanese art of Kintsugi - the method of restoring a broken piece of ceramic with a lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum powder. Kintsugi embraces the flawed or the imperfect and the concept of non-attachment and acceptance of change as aspects of human life.
