Kamla Kakaria

Kamla Kakaria is a first-generation American from East Indian descent and spent her formative years between the East coast in the US and New Delhi.  She attended college part-time for many years as a single working mother and received her BFA in painting and her MFA in printmaking. She started exploring materials while in graduate school and became interested in moving her paper pieces into space. Through experimentation she focused on using beeswax with paper to create high-relief pieces which she terms “2 ½ D,” later shifting away from paper to wire for dimension and form. Kakaria’s work was shown in May 2016 at 4Culture, where she made a full environment with screenprints on glassine and Tyvek covering the wall, and wax-covered wire and string hanging from the ceiling.

Kamla received GAP 2016 funding to travel to India to research and document the visual influences that permeate her work. As an artist, she has been working independently from the way young Indians manifest art today within a culture rich in its visual history.  By researching and gaining an understanding of contemporary Indian artists, she believes that doing this kind of research into her heritage and visual influences will help to ground her and her understanding of who she is as a first-generation Indian American artist.