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Publications & Press
Here you will find write ups and media publications.
In her eyes
by Nik Fahmee
Sharini Yogi talks with her eyes. When you speak to her, you can almost immediately tell she is articulate with passion and kindness to match. I am having coffee with her in a café overlooking a busy street, but my attention is all on her because I cannot help but give her my full attention. She commands it, as there are no small talks with Sharini and she gets straight to the matter at hand – and I like that. She is a mother of three daughters and has a strong support network comprising of her husband, mother and grandmother too: Family is key, and they are everything to her. Albeit the strong front, she opens up tenderly too - she is neither embarrassed nor apologetic about being new in a competitive art scene, or for being a self-taught artist. As a matter of fact, she finds strength in the fact that she is new, and is learning and discovering the scene.
Sharini started painting in 2015 by composing figures and objects. But it was not until she met Stephen Menon in 2019 that she went into a deeper sense of art abstraction. For Sharini, Stephen was a godsend and her life vitamin, as he guided and molded her perceptions and put her on a treadmill to explore artmaking options. He got her to explore colors, medium and techniques. Art has been therapeutic for her, and healing too she added.
She glows when she talks about her upcoming first solo show – HOLI, which means Celebration in Sanskrit. Aside from the obvious excitement and nervousness, she is clear in her mind that this is a show for celebration. And there is a lot for her to celebrate – finding herself and her voice is definitely high on the list.
All works in this show are named in Sanskrit, a classical language from South Asia that belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sharini finds comfort in keeping to a language rooted in her primary elements. In this show, paintings are layered and dripped to show the emotions she wants to convey. Inspired by Jackson Pollock, she wanted to explore the freedom of making art focusing on the process and strength of the material itself.
In MAITRI, she composed kindness and compassion. Her tone of voice gets lower when she is reflective. She said there are days when she needed to remind herself to not overly punish her body and mind. And that she needed to be kind too. Initially, MAITRI was all pink and fresh - then she decided to use three types of blacks to show the dominant pain that keeps resurfacing. While this work may appear dark, it is to show that kindness and compassion must and will always prevail. In essence, making sense of form and shapes are elements she wanted to celebrate. Pick any shape or line and see where it leads to - is the conversation she wants her paintings to offer.
PHAGU, or Beauty, is inspired by the beauty of nature around her. There is something very central with Sharini in that she is grounded and emotionally connected with her surroundings. And PRITHVI, Mother-Earth, is her response to nature. She knows she is a relatively young mother and is trying to find her balance while raising a family and exploring art. She is also clear that harmony is needed in finding the balance, and that when all is a tough and difficult, being centered and strong at the core like Mother-Earth is vital. The dynamics of her thinking process is captured in this composition.
Sharini is certainly not a philosopher or an academician, yet she speaks well and with substance. She makes art with these elements too, with a good dosage of love and passion. All needed in capturing a need to celebrate HOLI.
A celebration grounded and rooted in strength and determination, very Sharini Yogi.
Making A Splash
by Rajiv Vijayanathan
“It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.”
― Jackson Pollock
Sharini Yogi is an exciting young artist who has burst onto the Malaysian art scene in a rhapsody of colours and expressive paint strokes. In her first solo show “Holi”, she pays homage to the Hindu festival of the same name which signifies the triumph of good over evil and the arrival of Spring, where celebrants come together to throw coloured water and powders on each other. Unquestionably, the theme of Holi pairs perfectly with Sharini’s brand of colourful abstract expressionism.
The influence of the great American painter, Jackson Pollock, is immediately apparent in her works for this show. However, it would be wrong to discount her work as merely derivative of Pollock’s style. On the contrary, she has put her own spin on the Holi artworks by applying the American’s drip technique together with her experimental manipulation of fluid dynamics, a method which she has cultivated after much trial and error. The resulting works are complex, possess textural depth and crucially, as with the best abstract expressionist art, they reveal the intuition and inner voice of the artist.
She explains that her painting process entails hand speed and fluidity which somehow need to be synchronised with her instinct of where and how the paint should fall and be worked. These are not just splashes on a canvas but rather a complex weave of paint drips, lines, layers and strokes that culminate in a joyful celebration of the Holi festival. In this sense, it is interesting to note that though inspired by Pollock, whereas his drip paintings are often suggestive of anxiety, fear and emotional turmoil or entrapment, Sharini’s paintings in this exhibition project an overwhelmingly positive and celebratory tone.
Apart from their meaning though, it is important to appreciate the technicality of these works and the artist’s focus on the process of painting itself. At a time when there are some exceptional young talents penetrating the local art scene, Sharini Yogi stands out as one who has engaged in the style of action painting or gestural abstraction. In anticipation of this exhibition, she was encouraged by her mentor and established Malaysian artist, Stephen Menon, to study extensively, find her own voice and chart her artistic direction. Sharini immersed herself and quickly found herself drawn to the art of Jackson Pollock. To lean on a culinary analogy, as the renowned American Chef Thomas Keller once said “Most food is evolution or inspiration….”. In the case of Holi, the artist has taken inspiration from some of the great artists home and abroad but she has also injected a sense of individuality into a series of paintings which signal the prospect of a bright future for one of the emerging talents of Malaysian art.