A&D ANNUAL 2021

Mahitha Ramanathan

Mahitha Ramanathan’s practice examines experiential overlaps that characterise coming of age; between youth and adulthood, between ethnicity and nationality, and between friendship and family. Through methods of painting and drawing, she narrates her experience within these overlaps as a young woman of colour. Her practice is guided by post-colonial theories of identity and cultural hybridity. Here, an existence between cultures is explored as a fluid, indeterminate space, where identification with either culture waxes and wanes. Accordingly, Mahitha’s practice explores how her self-empowerment can emerge through embracing this natural indeterminacy. She works to contextualise the body in sites of indeterminacy, through fluid methods of rendering, considered colour use, and the employment of traditional materials and patterns. In doing so, Mahitha investigates how her identity can emerge in not committing to either opponent of an overlap; but rather by drifting in and out between the two.