Soghra Khurasani

(Visakhapatnam, India, 1983 - )

Indian

Soghra Khurasani works primarily as a printmaker in the techniques of woodcut and etching. A member of a large and conservative Muslim family, she was discouraged from an early pursuit of cricket playing and began accompanying her sister to art classes. In order to stave off marriage and take control of the course of her life, she attended Andhra University. Through multiple levels of schooling she has received training in the creation of large woodcut prints, using traditional layering of color, line, and texture. Much of her work consists of fictional, dreamy landscapes that are meant to resemble human skin, flesh, tissue, and scars. With this subject matter, she aims to diminish the distance between humanity and nature, in an effort to show that we are all connected to each other and to the natural world. The artist refers to skin as something that separates people—we are defined by our skin, its color, and what it says about us. Alternatively, her work pushes us to think deeper about these constructs, to look under the skin and recognize how similar we truly are. We are made up of blood, tissue, and cells, and if we focus on being natural, living beings we can further relate to the forms ofmountains and horizons. These efforts have general relevance, but Khurasani also uses her art as a metaphor for issues specific to her home country of India, where she sees great sensitivity around “national identities, freedom of thought, secularism, violence, and gender-bias.” Khurasani has also described being singled out as a Muslim, leading to a concern for insecurity attached to religion and identity in contemporary India. She expresses anguish she feels in relation to these topics quite physically through her work—she finds great relief in scratching and hitting the boards of her woodcuts.The process is deeply cathartic and authentically hers, an angry release resulting in long, deep gouges across the wood, or small, impulsive scratches. Her otherworldly landscapes may appear tranquil at first glance or from a distance, but a closer look often reveals furies of mark making. Khurasani’s process of incorporating color into woodblock printing is also labor intensive, as she typically adds seven colors to each print by transferring the image from the same single block to a print repeatedly, color by color. She also prefers to create impressions by hand, rather than through the use of a press. In these steps her process requires tiring manual labor and precise execution, depending upon both training and experience, and conceptual and emotional investment.
Khurasani received her post graduate degree in Print Making (with Distinction) from M.S. University of Baroda in 2010 and her undergraduate degree in Painting from Andhra Universityin Vishakhapatnam in 2008. She has shown extensively in India and the United States, and has participated in several group shows. Her solo exhibitions include Shadows under my sky(TARQ, Mumbai, 2021), SKIN (Gitler & ______, New York, 2018), Cratered Fiction (TARQ,Mumbai, 2015), To Speak for the Mute (Gitler & ______, New York, 2014); Reclaiming Voices(Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, 2014), and One day it will come out (TARQ, Mumbai, 2014). Khurasani and her husband and fellow artist Shaik Azghar Ali operate Awaaz Studio on the outskirts of Vadodara, India, as part of an “art village” established among a group of artists.

Vadodara, India

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