Artwork by Harleen Kaur

Artist Statement

My work explores the intersection of materiality and emotion, using abstraction as a means to translate personal narratives into visual form. Through layering textures, organic materials, and gestural marks, I seek to create a visual language that speaks to both personal and collective memory. I experiment with a free flow and expressionist idiom in my works that often take the form of circularity and the structure of a wave.

I work with a varied range of materials which includes untreated fabrics like Manjarpatta, allowing the material to play an active role in the final composition. By pouring paint, layering dry pigments, and using unconventional methods, I embrace unpredictability and organic movement. Inspired by both abstract expressionism and traditional Indian textile techniques, my work bridges contemporary abstraction with an intuitive, process-driven approach to materiality, scale and expressionist painting. Through my works I want to create a dynamic interaction between form and space, allowing the viewer to experience the energy within the composition. I invite the viewer to engage in an open-ended conversation with the works- whether it evokes a sense of movement, energy or even something more personal.

More recently, I have also begun to contextualise my work within a broader societal and historical framework. As a woman working in abstraction—a genre historically dominated by men in India—my practice inherently challenges conventions, contributing to the evolving discourse on representation in painting.

Ultimately, my work is an invitation to engage with raw, unfiltered emotion through material and form. As I continue to explore new mediums and formats, I aim to expand the conversation around memory, materiality, and the act of making itself.