Pennungal: Lives of women and girls

30 Aug-28 Sep 2024

PV 30 Aug 2024, 6-8pm

Sosa Joseph, Girls learning to find eggs inside hens, 2024, Oil on canvas. Credit: © Sosa Joseph

Overview

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Indian artist Sosa Joseph (b. 1971) at the gallery’s London location. This marks her first solo presentation in Europe. A masterful colourist and storyteller, Joseph creates atmospheric paintings in which figures from her family and milieu mingle with open-ended motifs from the natural world. Weaving together episodes in the lives of women and girls from Joseph’s childhood home of Parumala—an island village situated on the Pamba River in the South Indian state of Kerala—the works on view translate the artist’s personal memories into sweeping tableaux that engage with the tradition of history painting. Lush, vibrant, and rendered with an improvisatory and deeply introspective hand, the paintings embody a state of liquid flux in both their form and content; they undulate between sobering documentation and intimate psychological reminiscence, revealing the mores, strictures, and rituals both religious and secular that define the contours of daily life.

Artists