Deviba Wala: Ezra Magazine : Interview Deviba Wala

Article by Mark Londo

The Magazine is based in Adelaide, Australia

Deviba Wala believes in the ability of art to foster connections. A self-described cultural nomad, Wala’s style of framing multi-tonal arrangements of linear forms in space gives an intriguing perspective of interconnectivity through space and time. Each linear formation is autonomous from the rest, and yet they project a foreboding presence of an inevitable interaction with the others that lead to questions of influence and identity. Collectively, they resemble network typologies. However, if we view these linear forms as a window into dynamic networks, it’s important to note that – in the scope of interaction taking shape on Wala’s canvases – there is no discernible contact between them. Each form shares space with the others but they never quite connect.

In her artist statement, Wala describes her work as an “ode to a life’s pure existence.” Through that lens, one can imagine her work as a magnification of essential artery networks, each sustaining life throughout the human body. Or, one can turn the lens outward, and envision the dynamic streaks on her canvases as the trails of large comets, meteors, and planets, through space. If one were to think about life’s existence compositionally, these line formations could show the interactions of protons, neutrons, and electrons, in an atom. Nevertheless, there is an existential quality to Wala’s work that goes beyond any of these symbolic networks and can be more acutely understood by looking closer at the real-life networks of this fine artist.

"I first became acquainted with Deviba Wala as I was researching an interview that I conducted with fine artist Anastasia Alexandrin. As a resident artist in Ahmedabad, India, Alexandrin worked closely with Wala, who manages the Tvak Residential Art Studios. The residency is a derivative of Studio Verve; a fully functional art studio in Ahmedabad, which Wala co-founded in 2000 with her fellow art students. Today, Studio Verve has members from all across India. As the manager of the Tvak studios, Wala works with artists from around the world; sharing creative spaces and learning from other cultures through art. It is a program designed to encourage empathy and appreciation for humanity by lowering barriers that obscure understanding in global networks.

As contemporary social critics, artists provide an essential function within these networks. They open up windows to the world, both real and imagined; and as our communities grow closer together, technologically, the bandwidth of these creative networks become dense and the very essence of ‘pure existence’ comes into focus. Deviba Wala welcomes this process and actively bridges these divides. She is doing that with the Tvak residency program and as a fine artist, exhibiting internationally, in galleries as far-away as London and Moscow.

Her London show, Searching for New Connotations, was described in All In London as discarding “all ideological statements about the nature of ‘art’, cherishing the unblemished subsistence of beautiful forms, on a conceptual as well as on a compositional level.” It is such unblemished view of the aesthetic which reflects her ideal of art as a route to universal understanding. Wala expects viewers to bring their own ideological perspectives to the gallery; and, through stripping her canvases of those elements, she is reaching out to her viewers on a fundamental level. It is a process in which viewers are free to identify with her vision by layering the work with their own narratives."