Gargi Chandola - Artist & Illustrator

Gargi Chandola is a visual artist based in New Delhi, India, specializing in Indian Miniature painting with a focus on the Pahari school. Under the mentorship of a master artist, she has trained in traditional techniques such as gilding, pigment preparation, and Wasli paper-making, drawing from the Indo-Persian art tradition.

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Her work is deeply influenced by her surroundings, a secluded, forested area where she shares space with Rhesus Macaques, often outnumbered in a daily struggle over territory and resources. She documents their acts of wanton destruction, stealing clothes, toying with car mirrors, uprooting plants, and crushing flowers, revealing a chaotic yet deliberate world that mirrors human behavior. Chasing them away became a daily ritual which led her to question notions of power, dominance, consumption, and survival.

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In her work, monkeys become reflections of the self engaging in trickery, mind games, and violence in pursuit of the ultimate prize: the bananas. Their phallic symbolism underscores themes of dominance, echoing gendered power dynamics.  As control shifts and evolutionary hierarchies blur, the boundaries between human and animal, man and woman, play and aggression dissolve.

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A distinctive element of her approach is humor, sometimes subtle, sometimes slapstick, used as both a coping mechanism and a tool for critique. Through irony, satire, and exaggeration, she challenges entrenched notions.

Ultimately, her work sparks an intimate yet universal dialogue, urging viewers to reflect on the absurdities and contradictions of contemporary life through the lens of the natural world.

 
Gargi is the co-founder of Post-Art Project, a multi-disciplinary arts studio. She is currently training in Pahari Miniature under the mentorship of a master artist. Her work has been showcased in a number of shows in India and London. In 2023, she had her first solo with Method Kala Ghoda.