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In her multi-disciplinary practice, Manju Sharma (1972) unravels the torn emotions stored in bodies with a history of colonial migration: ‘In a state of never leaving, never arriving,’ as Sharma puts it. She approaches the body as an archive, exploring how this past continues to resonate through later generations. The artist grew up in the United Kingdom after her family left India. She currently lives and works in Utrecht. Her decision to enrol in an art academy at the age of forty was driven by a personal need to express ‘the language of hurt and healing.’ Her artistic practice thus serves as a site for decolonial research and explores various types of storytelling.
Her work at Prospects marks her debut as a painter. It is part of a series about her relationship with her deceased mother, who suffered from severe depression caused by migration trauma. Sharma compiled a photo archive of her family and translated the images into what she calls ‘emotional storytelling’. She does this using tarot cards as a reference. The work Change (2024), for instance, combines her astrological birth chart with two photographs of her aunts, taken in India at the time of her birth. The painting is full of Asian symbolism and therefore not necessarily accessible to Western eyes. At the same time the works evoke a sense of consolation. Sharma: ‘Just like tarot, I hope my paintings can serve as a guide to help people explore their own stories, thoughts, and emotions – to discover their own voice and how they do or do not want to express things.’
Text: Esmee Postma
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)