MAGICAL MUSINGS

Born in Myanmar, educated in Sweden and the Philippines, but originally from India – Vinita’s nomadic lifestyle takes her all over the world. She channels her constantly changing surroundings into her passion for art. No matter where she goes, through her paintings, sculptures, and installations, Vinita carries with her the rest of the world.

While no image is an exact replica of any one city, she brings alive her musings of the magical elements of each place. Her abstract cityscapes invite the viewer to enter them and inhabit a world with a pure golden sky, deep reds and blues shaping a rolling sea, festively coloured buildings, and a thin cloud stretching endlessly across the sky. Vinita paints her joy: the dream-like quality of her cityscapes reveals the beauty and grace she finds through both adversity and success. Every element in her paintings partakes in this celebration of life: the perfect crescent of the moon falls closer to the earth to experience the wonder, the bridges connect land and water for an unimpeded jamboree, and gold and silver foil literally adorn the landscape with festoons and decorations.

Though Vinita’s cities manifest on canvas without any specific portrayal of people, they exude a sense of warmth derived from their abundance of life and revelry. This warmth translates beautifully to her sculptures. Her “egg” series are not just beautiful shapes with ravishing colors but also represent the transition from womanhood to motherhood: the greatest process of creation of new life. To see Vinita’s art is to experience her joy and step into a world where the beauty of life shines clearly through everything you see.

Vinita Karim has lived and worked throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Her landscapes draw on her travel and experiences yet consistently link back to her roots in India. Karim’s gilt-leafed canvases are set in lands lived and imagined, built around life-lines of waters, in cities with significant sea histories. Layer by layer, she combines the sand dunes of Egypt with the islands of the Philippines, the ghats of Varanasi with the rivers of Bangladesh.

Vinita currently resides between Dhaka and Delhi. With 24 solo exhibitions to her credit, her work is shown and collected around the globe. She has recently exhibited in India Art Fair, India; Sikka Art Fair, Dubai; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; the Arabian Wings Auction, Saudi Arabia; and the Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh. She has earned a diploma in Fine Arts from Gerlesborg Art Institute in Stockholm and an MFA from University of Philippines in Manila.