Our Member Spotlight Series now shines on Vandana Jain! Queens born and now Brooklyn based, Vandana is an artist and textile designer. She received a degree in Art and Art History from New York University and went on to study Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her work explores the intersection of spirituality and consumerism through a variety of materials, including sugar, shattered auto glass and artists’ tape. Recently, she has gotten her old loom back and started making weavings and sculptures from found materials.
On her website - vandanajain.net - Vandana states:
"I often appropriate and re-use of byproducts of consumerism, working with logos, slogans, packaging and wrappers to create artworks that question mass consumption and capitalism.
The recent weavings incorporate found materials, taken from the 'free' piles around the city, juxtaposing them with traditional weaving techniques and materials. These tapestries are literal ornaments of our material excess. I am interested in systems of value, and how cheap it is to make a birthday banner, and how expensive it is to knit your own sweater."
Vandana's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Art Slant, Mumbai Boss, Kyoorius and Beautiful Decay. In the last few years, she has had solo projects at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY (2018); Lakeeren Gallery in Mumbai, India (2012); Station Independent Projects, Lower East Side, NY (2013); and Smack Mellon and BRIC House in Brooklyn, NY (2014).
"Sometimes I'm just trying to see what happens. For me there's a lot of excitement and play, even just seeing different colors next to one another." - Vandana Jain
Vanda also teaches at Saori Arts NYC. She says, "I loved coming across Saori because the whole philosophy is just something I naturally fell into with my work... They have four slogans, and the first one is 'consider the differences between a machine and a human being.' I think as weavers, it's something I think about a lot... especially when I'm striving to make a wall hanging, I like to think about where is me in this, how can I be present here, what does that mean - both for myself as a maker, but also for the viewer.... It's really been so incredible to know more about Saori teaching because I do feel like all of their precepts I really believe, they're some of the things that keep me with weaving. I think it's just important to be present in the moment, be OK with your mistakes, to take inspiration where you can find it, to be bold and adventurous."
You can follow this prolific and inspiring artist on Instagram (@vuhn.duh.naa) and on the image below to watch Vandana's Members Spotlight Series interview on our NY Guild of Handweavers YouTube channel: