My work is grounded in distanced translations and re-presentations and celebrates vivid colors, geometric, floral and fractal patterning and unusual perspectives. Admiring and observing the history of craft through the medium of painting, I mine the histories of textile production and global trade to trace the lasting cultural and economic impacts of colonialism and as a method towards learning my own South Asian diasporic history. Pattern and decoration are used metaphorically and the references to specific textiles become the building blocks for my paintings, which present my research experientially. My paintings respond to the art historical impulse of painting surfaces like textile and skin, to represent drapery, pattern and fabric forms as a means of expression and figuration and a way to discover a potential disclosure of a specific textile's narrative, history and future possibilities. The textiles and patterns are my subject and in my paintings, I ask them to carry the autonomy, characteristics and affect of personhood; I playfully strive to represent a synthetic personhood born of the history of colonialism, globalism and immigration. My compositions are site-sensitive and ask viewers to figure meaning through a nuanced engagement with the work's surface in pedestrian space, expanding the boundaries between the mediums of painting, drawing, sculpture and craft. My work investigates heritage, community and American individualism as well as ideas of desire, opportunity, competition and alienation. Ultimately, I aim to orient experience towards a sensitive awareness of the ongoing search for belonging in place and in history.
Hasan (born 1987, NYC) received her B.A. from Oberlin College in 2009 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013, where she won the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. In 2010, she was awarded the Terna Prize Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Center for Book Arts, NYC, The Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, Deitch Projects, NYC, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY, the 2022 New England Triennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum and most recently at BRIC Arts and Media in Downtown Brooklyn in Spring of 2023. Recent solo exhibitions have been shown at LAUNCHF18, NYC in 2022 and at the Lee Gallery at the Miami University Museum of Art in Oxford OH in February of 2023. Meena has taught Painting at Rutgers University - Newark, Pratt Institute's Painting MFA program, the School of Visual Arts at Boston University and Studio in a School, NYC. She is currently Associate Professor in Painting at RISD, Providence and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
'When I Am Empty Please Dispose of Me Properly' at BRIC Arts is a group exhibition featuring the work of seven artists who explore the dominant myths of the American dream that govern and shape our personal narratives.
Correspondence Archive #21. Meena Hasan & Sharmistha Ray
Epicenter NYC Featured Artist: Meena Hasan
Something Curated | Contemporary Artists Using Textiles to Interrogate Histories of Colonialism
Hyperallergic | Echoes of Identity Across the Work of Two Asian American Artists
Greenpointers | Thursday Spotlight: Meena Hasan and "Post-Colonial Legacy"
Whitehot Magazine | In Conversation with Meena Hasan & Tommy Kha
Art Stockings: Dialogues on Art, Gender and Cultural Theory, Digital Lecture, Smith College
Coeval Magazine Interview with Meena Hasan
OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Meena Hasan
SPREAD with Marissa Bluestone, Sophie Grant, Meena Hasan and Miriam Hitchcock, Left Field Gallery, San Luis Obispo CA
Meena Hasan and Cal Siegel: wallflower frieze, 6BASE, Bronx, NY
Art Blog: Telling Tales – Sheherzade’s Gift at Twelve Gates Arts
Sheherzade's Gift curated by Jaishri Abichandani at Twelve Gates Arts, 10/20-11/29
|http://http://twelvegatesarts.org/exhibitions/sheherzadesgift|
Stages, organized by Matt Bollinger at Zürcher Gallery
|http://http://www.galeriezurcher.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=1342|
Sheherzade's Gift curated by Jaishri Abichandani at the Center for Book Arts 7/13-9/24
Sheherzade's Gift Exhibition, curated by Jaishri Abichandani, Sept 2015
http://localproject.org/2015/08/sheherzades-gift-exhibition-sept-3rd/
Group Show 826NYC Exhibition & Auction, David Zwirner Gallery, NY, NY 2015
http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibition/826nyc-auction/
Superfund Storytellers, Dialogues in the Visual Arts Panel at the Brooklyn Public Library. 10/8/2014
Are We Already Gone? FlickerLab Exhibition Curated by Negin Moss. 9/21/2014
CURRENT: Gowanus Group Show at Gowanus Loft, curated by Benjamin Sutton. 05/14/2014
Click to view CURRENT: Gowanus Studio Visit with Meena Hasan
Gowanus Open Studios 10/2013
Bosch Young Talent Show 2013 Den Bosch, The Netherlands 09/2013
Una residenza d’artista per Meena Hasan (Connectivity 02)
An article posted on the Premio Terna website commenting on the residency at the American Academy. To view, please go to: http://www.premioterna.it/#news/news/detail/una-residenza-dartista-per-meena-hasan-connectivity-02
Premio Terna 02
Awarded third place in the international art competition titled Premio Terna. 02 The prize includes a 3-month residency at the American Academy in Rome, a group show in Rome and Shanghai and publication in Premio Terna's catalogues.
visit http://www.premioterna.it/en/new/the-winners-of-the-terna-prize-02-announced .com
and/or TheWinners for more information