Pragya Kumar’s latest exhibition – What’s On Your Mind – features works created in her studio and collaborative artworks created with local artists and children from Ham Primary School and Wyborne Primary School
Through her practice, Kumar attempts to create harmony with herself and peace with nature. Her making-process is gradual, and she incorporates natural, calm, peaceful materials to her artworks and digs deep into her creative roots. She is inspired by traditional visual art forms from India and her practice attempts to hold on to these fast-diminishing art forms, the legacy of storytelling, the bonds, and connections they have created for hundreds of years. She has been lately working collaboratively with few artists in India to expand her knowledge and incorporate them into her practice.
Understanding the importance of wellbeing, this exhibition is inspired by her own current mental health and the changes in her life, where she is trying to embrace her unpolished, raw, natural self, accept her insecurities and collect and carry herself out of fear. Being an active community-based participatory artist and given the current socio-economic environment, Kumar would like the local community to response towards their mental health and well-being through interactions with her art. She has engaged the local community in South East London in co-creating some of the pieces in the exhibition and have had a creative discussion about what’s currently on their mind and how they feel about it. Selected works in the exhibition are made possible through funding by Arts Council England.
As part of the exhibition programme, Kumar will be running free community arts and wellbeing workshops on certain Saturdays at the gallery. More details: www.geraldmoregallery.org
Gerald Moore Gallery, Nottingham Lane, London, SE9 4RW. Saturdays 10am – 4pm. Admission: Free.
