Exhibition - Pallavi Sen: Colour Theory

Pallavi Sen invites us into an imagined domestic interior, each quadrant of which corresponds to a different but interconnected part of a home. Through partnerships with writers, students, and other artists, the project reflects the key tenets of Sen’s practice, namely teaching, collaborative making, and the nurturing of life. In this way, the various areas of the gallery also serve as stage sets to be activated by the artist and performers throughout the run of the exhibition.

The bold, primary colors, together with the exhibition’s title, evoke an art classroom and a place of creativity and play while a mix of furniture, paintings, tiles, self-marbled paper, and other media reflects the interdisciplinary material nature of Sen’s art. The artist’s watercolors are themselves intricate renderings of interior spaces populated by meaningful individuals and objects from her life. These private references join allusions to literature and history, revealing her keen interest in how the personal and the communal are interwoven into a rich tapestry. 

Sen’s video work, on view in the adjacent gallery, often features the artist’s own body in motion. These brief clips, ranging from 2014–2024, explore dance, singing, music, gesture, art-making, and self-representation in whimsical ways. The shorts originated as a way of making spontaneous work at a time when the artist did not have her own studio space, producing a vibrant blend of artistry and the everyday that saturates the entire exhibition.

About the artist

Pallavi Sen was born in New Delhi in 1989, and spent her childhood between Delhi and Bombay.

An alumna of St. Xavier’s College, Bombay, she received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, and a BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, Ohio. Sen has participated in various prestigious artist residencies, including MacDowell, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, PICA’s Creative Exchange Lab, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Shandaken Projects, Mildred’s Lane, Ox-Bow, ACRE, and the Yale Norfolk School of Art, among others.

Currently, she serves as the Assistant Professor of Multiples + Distributed Art at Williams College, Massachusetts, and is the Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine.

Pallavi splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she lives and works.