Suman Gujral
Suman Gujral turned to creativity to overcome her personal challenges including overcoming cancer. Her work explores the interplay of light and shadow in our lives.
“I have come to feel that events, personal and external, leave their traces on us, the past casts its shadows or light onto the present and our future as individuals and as a planet is shaped by it.”
She is an eternal optimist, she is inspired by the ability of human beings to survive and even thrive in the aftermath of trauma. During her MA, her research into the history of printmaking in India revealed to her the impact of the 1947 Partition of India on all aspects of life on the sub-continent and on her own family’s history which inspired a deeper interest in the effect of local and global traumas on individuals and communities. This formed the basis of her current work on the migrant crisis and its roots.
The materials and processes she uses underscore her themes. Printmaking has a long tradition of being used as a medium for protest. Monoprint allows Suman to make expressive, spontaneous works, that have a lot of light and movement within them.
Suman uses artist quality papers from India, Japan, Italy and the UK for their different qualities and symbolism. Khadi paper features heavily because it reflects her ancestral roots. She has recently started displaying her etching plates as artwork in and of themselves.
