Sheela Gowda

Sheela Gowda (born 1957 in Bhadravati, India) is an Indian contemporary artist. She lives and works in Bangalore. She first trained as a painter and later began working with sculpture and installation art.

Gowda studied painting at the Ken School of Art in Bangalore in 1979. She later earned a postgraduate diploma from Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan in 1982, and a master’s degree in painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1986.

She is known for using unusual materials such as human hair, cow dung, incense, and kumkum powder. Her work often focuses on everyday labour and the lives of marginalized people in India. Many of her artworks are process-based and connected to ritual and social practices. Her early paintings were influenced by K. G. Subramanyan, and later by Nalini Malani.

In 2019, she received the Maria Lassnig Prize.

 Early life 
Gowda began her art education in Bangalore and later studied in Baroda under artist K. G. Subramanyan.

 Career 
In the 1990s, Gowda shifted her focus from painting to sculpture and installation. Her first solo exhibition outside India took place at Iniva in London in 2011. She was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2014.

Her work often explores themes of labor, gender, and social inequality, especially the working conditions of women. She has shown her work at major international exhibitions such as Documenta and the Venice Biennale.

 Selected exhibitions 

 Chemould Gallery, Mumbai (1993)
 Bose Pacia Gallery, New York (2006)
 Iniva, London (2011)
 Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2013)
 Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2014)
 Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2019)

 Collections 
Her work is held in major museum collections, including:

 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

 References