Talkin’ Bout a Revolution is a solo exhibition spotlighting the work of Pyaari Azaadi, formerly known as Jaishri Abichandani. Taking its title from Tracy Chapman’s iconic 1988 song, the exhibition reflects Azaadi’s lifelong commitment to art, activism, and community. Known for her fearless approach to materials and form, Azaadi is an acclaimed painter and sculptor who continually embraces a multidisciplinary practice that challenges dominant narratives and centers feminist and decolonial perspectives.

This retrospective affirms Pen + Brush’s mission to provide mid-career women artists of substance with the platform and recognition they deserve. Azaadi’s work has been described by The New York Times as “resisting the patriarchal world by presenting a feminist vision of abundance. She knows that activism is about more than protest—it’s about making pleasure and joy even, or especially, when those things seem in short supply” (Jillian Steinhauer).  Talkin’ Bout a Revolution marks an important moment in her career, offering audiences a fuller picture of and deeper engagement with her evolving practice and its cultural, political, and aesthetic significance. Works on view will span the artist’s career and will celebrate feminist and queer-bodies, specifically through Azaadi’s South Asian identity and with social justice playing a heavy role on each works’ surface. Inspired by the contemporary social landscape, both here and abroad, as well as classical and devotional Indian art, South Asian culture and diaspora, and an unabashedly feminist agenda, Azaadi’s work utilizes Rasa theory, a philosophy which posits all art as an act of psychic and emotional transference between maker and audience, to build bridges and connect us all. 

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue will accompany the show, featuring essays by prominent voices offering a range of perspectives on Azaadi’s work and its impact across disciplines including:  lawrence-minh bùi davis, (curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center), Yashica Dutt (is a leading anti-caste expert, journalist and the award-winning author of the non-fiction memoir Coming Out as Dalit), Mona Eltahawy, (an award-winning writer focusing on Arab and Muslim issues and global feminism whose works have appeared in various publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times), Carmen Hermo (Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston), Pamela Sneed, (poet, performer, visual artist, and educator), Hrag Vartanian (arts writer, curator, and editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic),  and Anuradha Vikram (writer, curator, and educator. Vikram is the author of Decolonizing Culture and has written for art periodicals and publications from Paper Monument, Heyday Press, Routledge, and Oxford University Press).  

Pyaari Azaadi (she/her; b. 1969, Bombay, India) immigrated to the US in 1984. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Pyaari has continued to intertwine studio and social practice, art and activism, creating transformative work with Queer, BIPoC communities in New York for three decades. She founded the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) in New York (1997) and London (2004).   She is a recipient of the Huntington Arts Council Fellowship and a grant from New York Foundation for the Arts.  Azaadi has exhibited internationally including a critically acclaimed solo exhibition, Flower Headed Children at the Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles in 2022. Group exhibitions include P.S.1/MoMA, the Queens Museum of Art, and Asia Society in New York, 798 Beijing Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial in China, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, IVAM in Valencia, Spain, and the House of World Cultures in Berlin, Germany.