Breaking through the conventions of screenprinting

Talking to artist Shivangi Ladha

I was recently in conversation with artist, Shivangi Ladha whose work questions the true identity of what it means to be a human being. Through a self- referential process, the artist channels her engagement with social, political and ecological spaces through the exterior & interior of the human body.

Graduating from the Royal College of Art, London in 2016 with an MA in Printmaking, Ladha has developed the medium continuously. Prior to this, she pursued an MFA in Fine art from Wimbledon College of Art, London as well as a BFA In Painting from the College of Art, at Delhi University, India.

Her prints represent the collective voice of a crowd – a crowd seeking to rise and transcend to a place or state where there is no differentiation between gender, sexuality, race, caste, creed, disability and class, where we are essentially all one and the same from within.

The intention of my work is to raise awareness and spring consciousness in others about their own existence. It provides others with a different perspective in the concept of identity, which is not based upon mere constraints of the mind.

"I like my prints to be free and unrestricted; as such, I have attempted to break out of certain conventions of screen printing"

In the work Traversing the drawings are repeated through the action of screen printing across a surface; she then incorporates pieces of tape and places them on top of the print, which covers, imposes, hides, reveals and amplifies the bodies and their presence at the same time. An additional compositional layer, created with subtle coloured dots, rests atop. In its totality, tension is created between the organically hand-drawn and the mechanically reproduced states of making and experiencing the image.

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