Activity Room

Opening Reception: 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Artist Talk: 7:00pm

Hallwalls presents an exhibition of new and recent work by artist Pallavi Sen, featuring three video works alongside selected photographs and works on paper. Sen's work is a visually rich blend of multiple ideas realized across media. As indicated by the artist, her "current interests"—which indicate a path of exploration and discovery—include "planting meadows, inner lives of birds and animals, the grief of the anthropocene, South Asian costumes, domestic architecture, altars, deities, atheism and magical thinking, style, pattern history, masculinity, friendship + love, her future lover, farming and the artist as farmer, work spaces, work tables, eco-feminism, love poems, the gates to Indian homes, walking, seeds, and cooking."

This prodigious list of interests points to the diversity implicit in Sen's approach to artmaking, which is realized in rich and complex ways. From the simplicity of Eternity Ring, a b&w video loop with a single figure and a hula hoop swaying within a blank environment to certain works on paper that accentuate pattern and complexity, there is a wide swing to Sen's expressions. Figuration, objects, colorful accents, and objects coalesce into an expansive hybrid of visual language that frequently accentuates an almost chaotic affection for wild, open-hearted expression.

Throughout her works we find jubilation and wonder through complex visual cues while also finding the simplest images plunging us into thoughtful depths. The ease with which Sen navigates a path through distinctly unique visual expressions almost comes across as the expressions of a dreamscape or, at the least, the complicated and enthusiastic pathways of the artist's mind's eye. There is genuine iconoclasm in Sen's chosen means of expression, which present as endlessly compelling and evocative. There is no pun intended if we describe all these various works as products of the artist's interior "activity room."

Pallavi Sen was born in New Delhi in 1989, and spent her childhood between Delhi and Bombay.

An alumna of St. Xavier's College, Bombay, she received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, and a BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, Ohio. Sen has participated in various prestigious artist residencies, including MacDowell, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, PICA's Creative Exchange Lab, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Shandaken Projects, Mildred’s Lane, Ox-Bow, ACRE, and the Yale Norfolk School of Art, among others.

Currently, she serves as the Assistant Professor of Multiples + Distributed Art at Williams College, Massachusetts, and is the Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine.

Pallavi splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, where lives and works.