Natural Selection

So,why is this geek an artist? I love drawing and printmaking. But Ive always been fascinated by patterns and abstraction,chaos and order,science meeting art, says the 31-year-old,seated in the loft at her home in Noida. Her work is neither new media nor fine art. It has struck root in the space between these two categories thats what makes it intriguing.

From a business family in Delhi,Devasher began as an undergraduate student at the Delhi College of Art in 1997,drawing typical life studies and still life. It honed my skills but did not stimulate me enough to call myself an artist, she says. She did her masters in printmaking at the Winchester School of Art UK and returned to join Khoj,the Delhi-based artist association. I knew my art was not going to be easy to sell. It was important to have an alternative way of funding my projects, she says. Her style emerged,in creatures that were half-plant,half-animal,the vision of someone with a ripe imagination.

In 2007,Devasher ran into Sree Goswami,the owner of Project 88 in Mumbai. She handed over a CD of her work to the young gallerist,who liked what she saw. I had my first solo show,Breed,the same year with Sree and it was a thrilling experience to have an entire gallery play out ones experiments and ideas, she says. Large prints of the fantastical plant forms,some of which sold for Rs 2 lakh apiece,announced a new talent. I have been noticing her work over the last year. I liked her approach of pairing science with art. I havent seen anything like it in the Indian art scene, says Peter Nagy of Delhi8217;s Nature Morte Gallery.

Devasher8217;s tiny studio is dominated by a large flat-screen desktop computer,rolls of prints and a work-desk crowded with catalogues,DVDs and MP3 players. Having just finished a 10-month residency at Sarai,a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies CSDS in Delhi,she is limbering up for group shows in Taipei at the Museum of Contemporary Art,shows in Berlin and Warsaw and a solo slotted for 2011. The way I work usually involves a lot of research,a lot of failed experiments and trials before I settle on what I am finally going to do. After Sarai,I intend to use sound as a major element, she says.

The sound piece that she created at Sarai consisted of

interviews with amateur astronomers,who described their fascination with astronomy. I wanted to find out what made them obsessive about the stars and the planets,who these people were and why they do what they do, she says.

For the final work,she handed out yoga mats,and had participants lie down in an open garden. She encouraged them to listen to excerpts of the interviews on MP3 players. Lying on the mat and gazing at the stars,they were transported to a world of dwarf suns and black holes. I want to develop these interviews and sounds into a landscape of noise. I want it to be cacophonous,where viewers are surrounded by chaos; where they have to stitch together their own narrative out of the confusion, she says.

Her dream work would be something akin to Olafur Eliassons The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2003. Eliasson created an extraordinarily luminous sun from hundreds of monochromatic lamps; and the Britons loved it so much that they came and lay in its heat as if they were sunbathing on a beach. Devashers work has also looked at the interaction of science and the human response to it. I am interested in astronomy but I am also equally interested in the culture around it. The clubs,the communities and the bonding that comes about as a result of this shared interest, she says. That is where my art is taking me. I would like to see what the next project looks like, she says. So will we.