Manish Nai

This catalogue features full-color illustrations of works and exhibitions by the artist, as well as an essay by June Yap and interview by Zeenat Nagree.

Manish Nai (b. 1980, India) is an Indian abstract artist renowned for creating works that mobilize the classic formal languages of Modernism while vividly evoking his personal heritage by using materials that are both modest and quintessentially Indian, like newspaper, recycled clothing, and jute.

Nai hails from a family of jute traders, and his intimate understanding of the material comes equally from a cultural and familial relationship to it. His pieces are studies in tedious complexities that, once completed, are presented as a tightly organized unit. The various media he uses alludes both to the hierarchies of artistic media and of Indian social structures.

Published by Kavi Gupta, 2019, softcover, 102 pages, 7 x 5 inches.