Celebrating 10 Years of the Visual Artist Fellowship

Aamina Nizar

Were there any specific experiences, people, or opportunities during the fellowship that had a lasting impact on you?

The guidance of Prof Rahul Mehrotra helped shape my fellowship. He encouraged me to attend the class,

Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems, by Prof Tarun Khanna and Dr Satchit Balsari. Their lectures, together with Prof Donna Summers, inspired me to look at art and community engagement in a more impactful way.

My conversations with Sneha Shreshta were illuminating. She introduced me to apps such as artivive and encouraged me in interesting directions both at Harvard and in Boston.

Conversations with Fellow artist Sharbenu De were enlightening as he helped me understand the mediums I used further. We still keep in touch and are friends.

At the Fine Art Library, librarian Jessica Brady introduced me to  ‘Aqua Alta’ by Adrian M and Claire B. This pop up book uses Augmented Reality to tell a captivating story of love and loss. I am now experimenting using this technology in my current projects.

I was inspired by Prof Allen Sayegh’s course on, Mediums: Making Culture, Art and Technology. Here I was introduced to the writing of Malclom McCullough, Richard Sennet, D. Pye and Paul Virilio, scholars and architects who developed a critical understanding of mediums, technology, and architecture.

How has your work evolved since your fellowship at Harvard? What are you currently working on or excited about in your practice?

The year after my fellowship, I worked on a series of short films to tell the story of Colombo. This year I hope to continue to tell the story of cities and people through light experiments. I’ve also moved back to painting in my free time. Before I took up photography, I painted, and grounding myself in this medium again helps me reflect on my own skills as a visual artist.

Whose work is inspiring you right now, and why?

Colin Bowring aka Photon Wizard (Instagram: photon_wizard),  is an Oakland based artist who creates immersive experiences using light and form. His work is often in the form of rainbows, created using adjustable mirrors, holographic gyroscopes, water prism and bicycle rim water lenses.  He calls his work, ‘art science,’  and invites us to reflect on the physical world. I love how he uses physics and upcycled items to create his rainbows. Particularly as other immersive works often employ digital technology. I hope to use some of those techniques, in future installations of Colombo, whereas in the past I’d relied on digital technology.

Share one image that captures something meaningful about your practice today. This could be a recent artwork, a studio moment, or you at work.

On the right is ‘Light,’(2018) a photograph of a rainbow, made with light shining through a glass of water. This image was printed on canvas for the ‘Let there be Light,’ group exhibition. On the left is an acrylic painting of the same image.

As a photographer/visual artist, understanding light, in a physical and spiritual sense is key to my artistic practice. Across scriptures, God is likened to Light. These works are a reminder of creation’s everyday grandeur and the place they occupy as the source of all our artistic expression.

Explore more of the artist’s work here