Divya Mehra

The work of Divya Mehra melds critical precision with biting wit to produce disarming, deceptively complex meditations on difficult subjects. With a canny visual language and piercing concision, Mehra’s works give unexpected form to trenchant observations on themes spanning racial violence, colonial theft, displacement, and grief, deftly layering nuanced critique with an acerbic humour.

In Live Laugh Love, Mehra presents a pair of new works aimed at the social landscape of the Pacific Northwest. On the walls of the B.C. Binning Gallery, a monumental monochrome painting anchors the exhibition. Offering a wry critical counterpoint to the work of late American artist Robert Ryman, Mehra renders in white-on-white a racist poster that circulated in suburban Vancouver last year, producing a ghostly space at once seemingly empty and laden with the ways whiteness operates, occupies and subsumes.

In the gallery opposite, Mehra has constructed a child-sized play structure assembled from nearly 1,000 yoga blocks. Modeled on a castle from Nintendo’s original Super Mario Bros, the sculpture rehearses references familiar to the region — leisure, wellness, safe spaces, tech — while asking to whom the benefits of these cultures might primarily accrue and, more pointedly, who might require safety from whom in this landscape.

Divya Mehra: Live Laugh Love is generously supported by the Friends of Divya Mehra.

Biography

Divya Mehra (b. 1981, Winnipeg) is known for her meticulous attention to the interaction of form, medium and site. Her works are a reminder of the complex realities of displacement, loss and oppression. Mehra’s work has been exhibited, screened and commissioned by Frieze Sculpture, Los Angeles; Creative Time, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Queens Museum of Art, New York; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; Nuit Blanche, Toronto; and the Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. She has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Times of India, ArtAsiaPacific, Hyperallergic, The Globe and Mail, and The Washington Post. Mehra’s work is in numerous public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Global Affairs Canada; and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina. She is the recipient of the 2022 Sobey Art Award. Mehra lives and works in Seattle.