Teja Gavankar’s artistic practice is firmly rooted in drawing and site specific sculpture, with a proclivity towards spaces, objects and materials in her immediate surroundings, which serve as compelling mediums to translate her life experiences. Her artworks seek to inspire subconscious connections in physical spaces, by subverting mundane spaces with subtle distortions and alterations that add unexpected dimensions. Teja chronicles the lessons and implications of subtle changes in her everyday life in an organic, minimalistic, and surprising language.
Teja received her BFA from L.S. Raheja School of Art, Bandra, Mumbai and Master’s in Visual Arts in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U. Baroda, India. She also holds a certificate in Indian Aesthetics from Kalina University, Mumbai. In 2017, Gavankar had her first international solo-exhibition at ‘Optica Center for Contemporary Art’ in Montreal. She has been part of several group shows like ‘Young Subcontinents’ in Serendipity Art Festival (Goa, 2016). Teja received the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Supporting International (India-Quebec) Residency at The Darling Foundry in Montreal, Canada in 2014; She has also attended residencies at What About Art (Mumbai, 2016), Space Studio (Vadodara, 2019), amongst many others. She was a part of the Khoj Peers program (2014) and Activating Space (2015) at Khoj International Artist Association in Delhi, India; she was a part of ‘In Situ’ Project at the Verticale Artist Center (Laval, Canada 2015) and also collaborated with Case Design on a project which was a part of Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. Teja recently won the Space118 contemporaries residency (Mumbai, 2020). She lives and works in Mumbai.
