Featured Artist: Labdhi Shah

Labdhi Shah is an artist based in Ahmedabad, India. Trained as an economist, clinical psychologist, and art therapist, she is a self-taught artist. She specializes in finger-painted art works created from intuition without any reference or pre-sketch, distilling the purest expression of her emotion into her art.

Art seeks to convey the truth of the human experience, in all its complexity. Her effort as an artist is to share the faith she has in the capacity of love, and to accept the uniqueness of every human being irrespective of race, color, gender, and culture.

She works with a variety of media including watercolor, acrylic, charcoal, and ink, and enjoys the uniqueness of each medium.

Her work has been featured in art publications around the world, including Curious Publishing, Detester Magazine, Porridge Magazine, Postscript Magazine, and Copper Magazine.

Her recent participatory art installation on the theme of love, titled “Rainbow of emotions”, was featured at the Abhivyakti art festival, 2020. Her work was on view at the recent virtual exhibition “Collective Impact” hosted by Ikouii in Atlanta, GA, at virtual exhibitions hosted by Las Laguna Gallery (A Light in the darkness), Student Art Spaces (Art in Adversity), and “Small Works” hosted by Ikouii. Her work was also in “Hope/Revolution” at Stay Home Gallery in Paris, TN.

Her passions include traveling and studying human complexity.

@gallery.lab26 on Instagram

Inner Isolation 2

Artist Statement:

Witnessing change during this pandemic has been as commonplace as breathing. What we had taken for granted as an integral part of our lives has been overturned. This pandemic has brought about a shift in a mindset of every single individual. and made them look inwards, to seek change and collectively work to create a space which is fruitful not just for them but for others also.

I am not coping with change, but for the very first time I have started walking with change as somebody would walk with their shadows. I have begun to see that it is not different from oneself, but a very crucial part of oneself without which one’s reflection would be invisible.

During this period, the way I sought to bring about change was by working on my own self and my own insecurities with full honesty. To emerge as a butterfly from the cocoon and share that joy through my art, the only way that I could tell the truth about how I felt. I believe that anything shared truthfully has the power to touch another person’s heart.

Inner Isolation 1

About the work:

I wanted to express my mental state in this Pandemic through my work. Coincidentally, the day I painted this, my partner was reading to me, an essay by James Baldwin about the creative process of an artist, which talked about state of aloneness that an artist must cultivate.

With this work of mine, I wanted to convey that isolation is neither dark nor lonely. There is reality, which I accept, that the Pandemic has created a dark whole, but the color of your spirit can never fade when you are at your most natural and true form.

Inner Isolation 3