Until the 1st of May, 2023, one has a chance to have a look at the exquisite artworks of Amba Sayal-Bennett. Her solo exhibition Architectures of Excess featuring her latest sculptural installations is being held at CARBON 12.
Focused on Modernism’s architectural heritage, Sayal-Bennett studies how its forms migrated to places like Chandigarh: she explores a part of the diasporic experience – the movement of bodies, knowledge, and form across various sites. Chandigarh was one of the earliest planned cities in post-independence India that looked toward the future while distancing itself from India’s violent past. Through her art pieces exhibited in the show, she addresses inheritance issues and suggests ways to critically engage with this architecture and its heritage.
For Sayal-Bennett, architecture is a tool for future imagining. Her art has a sci-fi aesthetic. Streamlined Modernist architecture is often typical of this genre: it helps to reflect utopian visions of speed and progress. Sayal-Bennett is interested in the concept of the Orient as a place of European invention: here, farness, a marker of distance in terms of space, is transformed into a property of people and place. In her 3D printed artworks incorporating Mughal miniature’s flower motifs and thus challenging Modernism’s rigid geometry, the artist depicts farness as both a spatial and temporal element and shows complex relationships between sci-fi, Modernism, and Imperial legacy.
About the artist
Amba Sayal-Bennett (born in 1991) is a British-Indian multidisciplinary artist residing in London; her artistic practice involves drawing, projection, and sculptural installation. In 2012, she obtained her BFA at Oxford University and earned a MA degree in The History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2013. In 2021, she graduated from Royal College of Art with a MA degree in Sculpture. The artist was awarded her PhD in Art Practice and Learning from Goldsmiths. Sayal-Bennett is currently an Associate Lecturer in Visual Culture at UWE Bristol.
She has her artworks displayed in numerous solo and group exhibitions, such as A Track to Bare, Carbon 12, Dubai, UAE (2021); A Mechanised Thought, Indigo+Madder, London, GB (2020); Every Line Makes a Cut, Carbon 12, Dubai, UAE (2019); Plane Maker, Carbon 12, Dubai, UAE (2017); Yours in Truth, Space118, Mubai, India (2022); Bridging Landscapes, French Riviera, London, GB (2022); Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2021); ABSINTHE §2, Collective Ending, London (2019); As You Become, Exhibit 320, Delhi (2018); ROYGBIV, Kate Werble Gallery, New York (2018); and Old Rope, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2014; and many others.
Sayal-Bennett received a number of awards including Gilbert Bayes Award, Royal Society of Sculptors (2020); Graduate Studio Award, A.P.T (2014 – 2016); WW SOLO Award, WW Gallery (2014); and others.
To learn more about “Architectures of Excess”, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
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