vidya kamat

Born in Mumbai, India

1999: Ph.D. University of Mumbai, Thesis Titled- Myths and Symbols in Pictorial Expressions as Seen  from Sanskrit and allied literature. 1995: Diploma in Sanskrit. 1992:  Post Graduate Diploma in Comparative Mythology. 1983: B.F.A.(Fine Arts) University of Bombay.  
2002: Awarded National cultural Fellowship by Majlis-India, and funded by HIVOS Netherlands. 1983-1984: Awarded Fellowship of Goa College of Art, Goa. 1983: Best Student award at annual Art Exhibition.

Her engagement with the physicality and mortality of human body began while she was working as a museum curator of the anatomy section. Placing her own image as an emblem of a particular representational category, she critiques the social imposition of values on such representations. Footnotes to Innana (I- V) deals with the Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS), taking the texts written by feminist sociologists as a point of departure, Vidya superimposed these texts on her digitally manipulated portraits. Gender as a critical category and feminism as critical theory not only questions the specific modern constructions of the female body-self but also of modernism at large.

“Kamat is neither an ethnic artist stuck in the box of anthropology-as-art, nor is she blasé secularist, a cosmopolitan artist distancing herself from the past and personal; struggles: she does not abolish the sacred to attain the secular, but instead extends herself through symbolic performances that gauge the density and mobility of her individuation. For these works are nothing less than wagers of a difficult process of individuation. I would content that Kamat is working towards personhood that can be achieved only through shifting performance in the course of which she assumes several personae. She is trying slowly to individuate herself, from the crisis of loss of faith in herself, the lack of trust in loved ones, the sense of being orphaned and disinherited from the realm of affection” – Nancy Adjania.