Neha Vedpathak: In Plain Sight

This mid-career presentation spanning works created between 2017 and 2026 offers a focused look at recurring ideas that have shaped Chicago-based artist Neha Vedpathak’s practice. The exhibition is organized around three interwoven themes that reveal the connective threads that run throughout her work.

Vedpathak (b. 1982, India), known for her tactile paper installations and wall reliefs that expand the possibilities of the medium, began her career as a painter. She created minimalist abstract works on canvas before seeking ways to move beyond the two-dimensional picture plane. In 2009, after experimenting with a range of materials, she discovered handmade Japanese paper, noted for its long, exceptionally strong fibers, which became her defining medium.Part painting, part sculptural relief, Vedpathak’s textured constructions appear to float on the wall while casting intricate shadows. Using a rigorous technique she pioneered, which she refers to as “plucking,” Vedpathak separates the fibers of the paper one by one with a tiny pushpin. Every work is built through thousands of these minute interventions that transform the paper into an entirely new material resembling lace or netting. She then sews together swaths of plucked paper and stains them with pigment. It is a deliberate and labor-intensive process that can take months to complete, making time itself an integral force in each work.Although her aesthetic has been associated with American Minimalism, Vedpathak’s visual language draws from traditional Indian artistic practices. As a student in India, she became interested in the geometry of Tantric art, where geometric forms, patterns, and ratios carry spiritual significance. Vedpathak in fact describes her restrained approach as “subtleism,” which centers nuance of color, texture, and materiality over the reductive formality of the Minimalism associated with Western art. Vedpathak’s work is further distinguished by the unmistakable presence of the artist’s hand, made visible in the thousands of micro-gestures that form the work.EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTSThe exhibition’s thematic groupings of land, body, and spirit are interconnected approaches to a practice in which place, lived experience, and a sense of wonder continually inform one another. “They are all part of each other at any given time,” says Vedpathak.LANDA sense of place is the starting point for much of Vedpathak’s work. Born in Pune, in western India, she spent her adolescence moving between cities across the country as her family relocated for her father’s work as a chemical engineer. This early experience of shifting geography has continued to shape her life. Since relocating to the United States in 2007, Vedpathak has lived in Detroit, Chicago, and Phoenix, with additional time spent at artist residencies in France and Greece.Whether responding to Arizona’s sunbaked desert terrain or the gritty urban environment of Detroit, Vedpathak absorbs the physical character of a place and translates it into abstraction. Using form and color, her subtle evocations of landscape convey the experience of inhabiting a place, transforming elements of architecture, weather, and geography into atmospheric compositions.BODYVedpathak describes the human body as both a physical form and a place of being. She created the works in this group in response to the recent rollback of reproductive rights and access to maternal healthcare in the United States. Vedpathak also points to her experience of becoming a mother and the body’s remarkable capacity for transformation as inspiration for the work, which celebrates the female form and reclaims traditionally male-defined narratives of sex and sensuality.These works unapologetically emphasize aspects of the feminine, articulated in voluptuous forms, bold colors, and sensuous textures. Despite their delicate, pliant appearance, the works possess an underlying strength and resilience, much like the artist herself.SPIRITFinally, Vedpathak explores the unseen forces that link the individual to the universal. “I feel very much connected to the universe,” Vedpathak says. “I’ve always felt—even when I was young—very aware, very in my body, very attuned to my surroundings, while also holding the sense of vastness at the same time.”In some works, Vedpathak investigates concepts of time and space, where the fluid, circular motion of a spiral form signifies the idea of time collapsing. In other works, she uses the rainbow to express the fleeting, often imperceptible moment that marks the transition into a new state of awareness or perspective. “When we shift from one space to another, whether emotionally or physically, that’s when something magical can happen.”In all the work, Vedpathak demonstrates how, through technical precision and meditative repetition, the humble medium of paper can become a powerful work of complexity and presence, suggesting that transformation can emerge not just through spectacle, but through quiet, sustained attention.