Priya’s mixed media evolves from a response to the fiber of life, which emerges from nature, from the stem of a plant, from the bark of the tree, from the nest of the birds, from the cocoon, which gives birth to the moth.

From a carefree life when she created woven fabrics in the tapestry technique, she moved on to study the art of the Rafoogars of Najibabad, who through their mastery of the woven pieces reconstructed with invisible stitches the original form which gave it a new life.

The sudden encroachment upon her life, from within, by the uncontrolled growth of the cells was a shock.  But she fought it relentlessly and in the process tried to understand the phenomenon.

Priya looked at nature in its multiple forms and found so many expressions emerging from many volatile forms.  As Priya says “the mixed media works arise from a thorough symbiosis – they completely inhabit the paper and vanish into the cloth.  Through such fusion a new organic morphology is distilled.  As I experience it any seeming description of the rhythm of the personal weave is simply another invaluable dynamic enunciation.

We are no more, no less than the mutable skeins in the cosmic warp and weft, infinite, immaculate and imperishable.

​

​Jasleen Dhamija

2017​

These works invoke notions of salvaging, repairing, and restoring—meanings that arise from an act of contemplation—the seeing of intrinsic worth in what is usually perceived as residual, as a remnant, and denigrated as less-than. Such discernment of inherent value then elicits the subjugated worth—transmuting and revivifying, affirming and honouring it. Thus Priya succeeds in expanding our understanding of the intricate order of things—acknowledging perfection in apparent imperfection, and identifying presence in seeming absence.

Yoshiko IwamotoWada

Berkeley, California, March 2017