Akshita Gandhi: “Now You’re Looking”

About

Akshita Gandhi’s creative world is one that conquers societal gender roles, empowers women, and transcends borders. Akshita is a Mumbai based multi-disciplinary artist. Her award-winning work proves that love for fantasy and imagination does not have to end with childhood.

This fall, Akshita revealed her “Let There Be Light” series to the general public in New York. It was an exhibition of lightboxes during Fashion Week. To describe the concept in her own words, “Light signifies the beginning, the fantasy wave that teleports you into a realm where space, time, gender, identity, caste, creed et al becomes irrelevant because the artist’s soul is boundless and cannot be defined. Light strikes the moment you embrace all of you, your sexuality, your virtue, your sin, your lust, and your conformities. This series is an allegory of my soul denouncing hibernation and evolving, embracing the dark, the outcast, the bright, the good and ugly. The only thing that matters is you and your creation. We live in a world wherein our roles and lives are defined and judgment engulfs us but an artist lives different lives, in and out of different realms and parallel universes, constantly seeking inspiration and living in transience. I am Akshita Gandhi and this is all of me, an artist whose soul has come undone.”

“Now You’re Looking” presents these lightboxes for the second time in Miami. D’arte Mart will be showcasing two of her lightboxes “Angel” and “Clyde”. In addition, to a specially made sculpture “Wings” and a limited edition jacket that complements her “Angel” lightbox. The limited-edition jacket was a collaboration between Akshita and the designer Frank Debourge during New York Fashion Week.

At a very young age, Gandhi was encouraged to put away her passion for art to pursue a degree in Finance. Upon realizing that the world of numbers was not where her passions lay, she instead turned to pursue her MA in fine arts, choosing rather to chase her dreams instead of job security. Her choice to dive headfirst into a career that is, in her own words, “…more than a photograph, more than a painting, more than just reading a poem, more than just reading about concepts” She just wanted to stay true to herself, she realized that art was her calling. She started by photographing slums, quaint lanes, and architecture of different cities around the world. She photographed parts of cities that make people cringe and parts that make them fall in love with a place over and over again.

“My work is not just a visual treat, it engages with my audience beyond that. It penetrates the viewer’s intellect, mind and tugs at the viewer’s soul. My work is amalgamated with poetry I write based on literary, historical or mythological references. From Shakespeare and Tolstoy to tongue twisters and nursery rhymes, from tales of Cleopatra to Don Quixote, all of it inspires me and I incorporate all of these themes into my work. My art is meant to transform the viewer into another realm not just simply become an accessory to fill space. It’s a medium through which the viewer experiences fleeting eternities.”

A firm believer in giving back to society, Akshita founded the Dua Foundation, a social enterprise that aims to empower vulnerable members of society by providing them a platform, which will enable them to gain financial independence via their art and craft skills. Proceeds from her sales go towards the work of the foundation.