BIO
Shivanshi Patel is an interdisciplinary artist born in India whose work explores the essence of repair, healing, and the formation of personal identity through the act of creation. She holds a M.F.A. in Fashion, Body, and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a Visionary Scholars Award upon admission and a B.F.A in Fashion Design from The National Institute of Fashion Technology, India.
She has exhibited work in various venues, including the Wellness Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sage Window Display of Fashion Design, natural settings including Chicago’s Millennium Park, and a restroom. She has also worked as a Fashion & Textile Intern for brands such as threeASFOUR, Rising Among and Leave The Rest.
ARTIST STATEMENT
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Shivanshi Patel is an interdisciplinary artist working with fibers, soft sculpture, and fabric installations. Her work stems from a research practice rooted in photography, and explores the nature of mending, healing and creating a sense of identity through the process of making. The manipulation of the fibers creates a space through which she encounters and processes her emotions. Each stitch taken and each yarn placed contributes to her unique visual language. This visual language draws people in, affecting people through shifts in scale and detail. Interaction with her work plays a vital role in her practice; the act of the audience observing and touching the work creates a shared experience between them.
The foundation of her current explorations is the tension created by absence, incomplete memory supplemented by photographs, the contrast created by growing up in an environment of domestic abuse, pain coexisting with comfort, absence with love. The dialectics formed by these contrasts are explored in her practice through the repetitive act of intricate needlework. These repetitions mirrors repetitive behavior in her life, then she actively works to mend the harm they cause, rips becoming seams.
