Priyanka Bardiya

Born

Education
She is a graduate in Painting from Jaipur University, and completed her Master’s in Art History from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan.
Exhibition
She has taught for some time in the Art Faculty of Jaipur University, and taught children from her home in Pune for some time. She has a YouTube channel named “Chirp Chirp – visual stories” (animated stories she creates as an exploration of her visual language – <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCTmwNfFD360bKRMJcAo8XA)>
Priyanka’s art is very visceral without being negative; au contraire, they are joyous metaphors for growth, of life. One is reminded of those low shutter-speed videos of flowers opening their petals and stamens unfolding from curled up masses into straight standing wires. Their peculiar linearity is also very lyrical; reminiscent of Kandinsky’s abstract expressionist paintings. But while Kandinsky’s paintings have some flesh, Priyanka’s drawings are composed of sensitive crackling wires not unlike the nervous system that’s constantly buzzing with universal life, apparently appearing as a jargon of coloured lines, like tangled skeins of fine yarn; that on closer inspection, somewhat incidental, images of flowers, animals, birds or trees, gradually emerge from the works, that have an ephemeral quality, as though they are here now, and would be gone, the next moment you look at them. Thin attenuated filament like lines, grow out somewhat madly, hither and thither. There’s a lot of dynamism in these wayward lines, animating the drawing and instilling some kind of animistic palpable life in them.
As Priyanka herself describes them, her work represents life in a constant process of birth, death and decay. There’s an overall consciousness of frenetic pace of life in all forms passing us by in all directions and in all shapes, sizes and forms, biomorphic, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and beyond. There’s a grimness in this concept, yet there is a sense of music in her drawings, something more akin to jazz and blues than romantic pop.