About Artist

Subhadra Acharya is a versatile art practitioner, educator, and founder of the interdisciplinary art space “Shadanga”. Her creative journey is rooted in deep conceptual exploration, characterized by meticulous research, extensive surveys, and a thoughtful execution of each work.

Subhadra’s artistic path has taken her across national and international art galleries, educational institutions, and museums throughout India and Europe. She pursued her formal education at Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan—an esteemed institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore. She further broadened her academic experience through a student exchange program at École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de TALM (ESBA TALM) in France.

Her works have been exhibited across several European countries, and she has collaborated with renowned artists worldwide. Among her many recognitions is the prestigious Young Artist Fellowship awarded by the Government of India.

After completing her Master’s degree in Painting, Subhadra joined Lovely Professional University (LPU) as an Assistant Professor. Alongside her academic and studio practice, she has assisted various art directors and production designers in Bengal, including one who received a National Award for Production Design.

Every drawing, scribble, painting, or performance she creates emerges from a cerebral process—an initiative to render her surroundings more intelligible and meaningful. Currently, her practice is evolving through a deeper spiritual inquiry, engaging audiences not only through exhibitions but also through performance and various other art forms.

Through Shadanga, she actively works with children from both rural villages and urban areas, using art as a medium to share her creative journey and inspire new generations.

Though my current work seems to fall within the realm of abstraction, however, upon deeper reflection, I can recognize that my praxis is deeply- rooted in a profound connection to the (un-)known—a love that I first encountered through introspection and which intensified during the solitude of the lockdown period. While my earlier works during my MA in Painting were largely conceptually motivated and executed with pragmatic intent, the global stand tranquillity of those quarantine days forced me to turn towards a journey to the inner self. It was in this chaotic moment, that I discovered a meditative and singular creative rhythm that allowed me to inscribe inner vividness through subtle gestures and intuitive marking. My praxis dissuades confinement to a specific space, material, or process. Instead, it is fluid and responsive, shaped by the material and situation. I engage with the multiple moments of creations. I prioritize the journey over the outcome, focusing on the tactile and temporal dialogic process between myself, the medium, and the viewer.

My objective is always to create spaces—physical or metaphorical—where interaction and experience unfold naturally, allowing public and private realms to intertwine. In the purview of my work, the boundaries between the individual and the collective are not clearly distinguishable. As an art practitioner my motto is to visually emancipate the viewers to reflect on their own perceptions. The recurrent use of the word “I” in this artist statement is deliberate: I am essentially sutured into my work. As I shape my art, it re-shapes me at the same time. Every drawing, scribble, painting, or performance I create is the result of a cerebral process an initiative to make my surroundings intelligible.

I firmly believe that each human being embodies abstraction: we are all uniquely constructed, distinguishable merely by our names, and that distinctiveness is the real magnificence of nature. This belief fuels my fascination with the embodied human being not just as subjects but as complex systems of lines, shapes, and energies. For me, pure abstraction is not different from life; it is life itself. Every breath, every heartbeat, every scratch of a line echoes the infinite abstraction of the cosmos. Through my work, I want to represent those invisible connections—between body and universe, self and other, inner chaos and outward form.