The first time you see Seema Kohli's work, you're taken aback by the
brilliance of the colors, the delicious strangeness of the figures and
the ethereal brushwork: intricate, profound and expertly crafted. But
what you will remember is the mysterious orb that hangs over her
oeuvre, sometimes in paint and sometimes in spirit, it is the golden
womb and it is her refrain, her leitmotif and the centre of her
artistic vision.

This is where Seema Kohli spent 11 months of her life, her mind still
unformed; her body still undecided, and because she had more time, she
remembers, making her art an unfurling chronicle of a memory and the
narrative of her journey. To her, the womb represents the perfect half
way house, between the material and the divine, it's where we let go
our cosmic consciousness and finally take on the human condition,
forever forgetting where we came from and what it all means.

Her brush excavates, discovers and brings into focus, sights and
sounds of this world within a world, capturing creation in creation,
unearthing the cycle of life from under the miscellany of living. And
it's from deep inside the womb that she gets her inspiration, as if
she is an insider, giving us glimpses, stories and songs only she is
witness to.

It's these glimpses that become the subjects of her critically
acclaimed work. Not surprisingly, her recent mixed-media work,
Ouroboros is the story of birth, of life and liberation, brought alive
through a virtuoso performance that spans across 84 paintings and
photographs.

In 2009, she received the prestigious Gold Award at the Florence
Biennale for her video installation, Swayamsiddha-Myth, Mind and
Movement. Important works of hers have found their way into public and
private collections across the world, most recently at the Rubin
Museum, New York; the New Delhi International Airport and the Indian
Defense Ministry.

She has also received the Young FICCI Ladies Organisation Women
Achiever’s Award and the Lalit Kala National Award for Women in 2008 -
one of the highest honours an artist can receive in India.

Seema Kohli currently lives and works in New Delhi.

Arjuna Gaur
2011