A spotlight on Neha Choksi

• Neha Choksi received her MA in Classics from Columbia University, New York and her BAs in Greek and in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, London, New York, Madrid, Amsterdam, Sydney, Istanbul, Delhi, Bombay, and as part of the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale. 
• She is a member of the Artist Pension Trust, Los Angeles, and serves on the editorial board of X-TRA, an arts journal published out of Los Angeles.  Her work is currently represented by Carl Berg Projects in Los Angeles and Project 88 in Mumbai. 
• Among her selected solos are ‘Iceboat (From the Trilogy on Absenting)’, Project 88, Mumbai (2012); ‘If nothing else, just a smile’, Project 88; Recent Video Works, Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles (2010); ‘don’t hold it in breathe out’, Project 88 (2009); ‘Who is in town anyway?’, Project 88 (2007); ‘Gravity’s Playthings’, Carl Berg Gallery, Los Angeles (2005); ‘Homeless Encounters’, Carl Berg Gallery at Scope NY, New York; ‘Renouncing the World’, Bir Dukkan: Sanat Mekanı, Istanbul; ‘The American President Travels (East), Block Gallery, Sydney’ (2002); ‘Floral Futures’, The Fine Arts Company Gallery, Mumbai (2001).
• Among her collaborative or two person shows are a display with Sandeep Mukherjee at the 2011 Hong Kong Art Fair; ‘Leaf Fall II;, Project 88 at the Indian Art Summit, Delhi (with Rohini Devasher) in 2009; and ‘Reading ^ the lines’ (with Kapil Gupta, Niti Gourisaria, and Ashim Ahluwalia) in 2007, among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Mumbai.
• Her photographic series ‘If nothing else, just a smile’ serialized a tour through a single cemetery approached as an altered garden in the tradition of nature-morte. In addition to selecting amputated trees, she had cropped them and made the view partial, and then she effaced them even further by drawing over them. This point of erasure--the place where absence get memorialized, i.e. headstone, cemetery, chopped tree limb node—was exactly where the drawing emerged. The site of loss was scratched with drawings of happy faces.

Her work featured at Frieze Fair ‘Poise II’ courtesy Mumbai-based Project 88 also brings out the crux of her art practice.