MEET Naina Somani!!
Naina Somani is our Artist of the Week. She is a freelance artist, Printmaker and Research Scholar based in Udaipur, Rajasthan. She has a knack for creative visualization. She completed her Bachelor’s in English (Hons.) & Visual Arts in 2018. Soon she found herself in Masters in Visual Arts at Mohanlal Sukhadia University. She graduated in 2021. Soon, she enrolled herself in a PhD in 2023 at her alma mater.
Naina Somani’s Art Style
Her work ranges from the truth of Realism to the absurdity of Abstract. She works with graphite, charcoal, oil, acrylic, watercolours, pen &ink; across various genres including logo designs, fashion illustrations, customised designs and tattoos, Figuration, Conceptualism, and spiritual & religious Portraiture.
Courtesy – Abir Space
Naina Somani is an avid traveller. She finds her muse in the cacophony of the city – the humane hustle and bustle which she channels in her conceptual artworks. More recently, she has forayed into the sensitivity of the harsh social realities, faced both by humans and nature. This superimposing technique reveals complex layers of the natural psyche world transparently.
Naina Somani’s art style is such that she moves you to feel. She also portrays our connection to the animal world, which is considered alien yet reverberates in singularity. She is dismayed by today’s scenario where animals are violently used for leather, fur, meat, and more. She reminds the viewers of unison and brotherhood.
Courtesy – Abir Space
She unites us; sewing us into her ideology of human emotions; and unwavering equality amongst race, religion or cultural inheritance. She creates a slightly ‘similar body and face as a skeleton‘ hoping that the viewer can go beyond the specifics of one person/ face and see themselves in each of them.
Naina Somani’s Mastery in Printmaking
Printmaking has entwined its vibrant train of thoughts into the amalgams of Somani’s life; and shaped her journey in veritabluy even now. Her academic pursuits successfully found outlets in printmaking techniques, connecting to the expressiveness of woodcuts. To her, it is a meditative and reflective process, where each stroke moulds her thoughts and imagination. Conjoined now, it adjoins her discernible form and expression.
Courtesy – Abir Space
Disability – A Heartwarming Painting
One of her paintings, “Disability” – a Tempera on Paper (16.53 x 11.69 in) depicts the emotional relationship of a son and his handicapped Father. Carrying his son in his wheelchair; a scene Somani carried from her own experiences fills you with sadness and grief, both of the son and the father.
Naina Somani’s Achievements and Accolades
Naina Somani has exhibited and participated in shows as workshops across the country in Amritsar, Udaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, and Lucknow. She has showcased internationally, particularly in a group show — the International Art Exhibition at Istanbul Arel University, Turkey in 2024; Poland, Wroclaw in 2022. She has also been selected for a Group show in Pink Iron Vimla Art Forum, AIFACS, New Delhi
She participated in -Nex-G 2023 exhibition in collaboration with Lalit Kala Akademi. Her artworks were featured on the 2023 front cover of ‘Apni Maati Magazine’ listed under UGC Care. Somani also exhibited at the 2021 Kalakaari Film Festival, the 2021 Camel Art Foundation, and the 2016 Kumbalgarh Festival presented by Rajasthan Tourism.
Image: Enclosure beneath the Marine Foliage (2021), Woodcut, (22×32 in) Courtesy – Abir Space
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I love writing about pop culture and all things queer.
Sub Editor at Abir Pothi
