Jai Chuhan’s lush, vivid, sexy paintings… are such a testament to what only paint can do and absolutely need to be seen directly! So much going on in terms of eroticism, art history, race and what we think we are seeing – nothing fixed in these paintings except their powerful presence.
Louisa Buck, on seeing Jai Chuhan solo exhibition, The Approach, London 2025.
“
Psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon explored identity in relation to the experience
of racism in his pioneering book Black Skin, White Masks (1952), describing the experience of having one’s sense of self relayed back to them in an unrecognisable form. Fanon describes the sensation of being held in suspension upon ‘recognition’ from white French society, particularly through a young French child who is frightened by his appearance... His experience of feeling held in suspension under the gaze of dominant society resonates profoundly…’ with Chuhan’s dancer series where ‘…the body may be held momentarily in suspension under an unwelcoming gaze, but the subject is not trapped within this. It asks: what happens beyond being othered? How can power be located within the body? There is resistance in that moment of stillness. Chuhan describes the figure as being captured amid a dance that is ultimately an expression of autonomy and control of one’s own body. Despite the fact that dancers in South Asian culture have often been looked down upon, Chuhan contends that ultimately they are powerful and in control on account of their ability to express their artistry.
… It is important to consider these paintings in relation to Chuhan’s perseverance as an artist, and her determination to claim a space for herself within the art world and produce something beautiful within it, refusing to be boxed in. The figures in the paintings resist categorisation and definition, as does the artist herself, through this very display of works that encourage multiple readings from a wide range of audiences.’
Hannah Marsh, Assistant Curator, Tate, extract from The World of Art is My Home in Jai Chuhan: Small Paintings monograph published by Hurtwood accompanying Small Paintings solo exhibition, Qrystal Partners, London 2023.
“
…There is a melancholic and instinctive spirit that beckons in each of her canvases, encapsulating how the painter becomes the painting with mind and body… The emotion embedded in Jai’s works becomes palpable through the bumpy textures and the scent of the thick application of oil paint. Each layer, encompassing both heavy and light mark-making, creates a rhythm and a cadence that points to an insistence on life and all its awkwardness, pain and beauty.
Donald Ryan, the exhibition curator, extract from the Foreword in Jai Chuhan: Small Paintings monograph published by Hurtwood accompanying Small Paintings solo exhibition, Qrystal Partners, London 2023.
“
Self Portrait – Railway 2024… The station, a site of the frenetic movement of arrivals and departures – but also the stillness of waiting, is the perfect setting for Chuhan’s figures who often appear suspended in time, between movement and stillness. Chuhan appears lost in contemplation but also gazes out towards us. The spacing of the figures, who appear isolated in their own thoughts, Chuhan’s use of shadow and the expressive brush work recall the work of Edvard Munch, who also explored the possibility of making interior life visible in his paintings. The overall effect is a sense of profound alienation: the self-portrait as a site for the complex negotiation of the contradictions Chuhan has experienced as an Indian-born, British artist, woman, mother and academic experiencing contemporary life.
Amy Dickson, Director, Harbour House, extract from essay for Jai Chuhan: Dancer solo exhibition, Harbour House, Kingsbridge, Devon, 2025.
“
Chuhan paints herself as an exhausted mother engaged in painting herself as a younger woman. Heavily pregnant, the artist’s younger self looks across the canvas towards her future daughter who is pictured aged three or four years old. Playing with her own reflection in a mirror, the little girl sits behind a classical Indian sculpture in the traditional tribhanga position…
Arnolfini, Bristol, wall text accompanying Jai Chuhan Self Portrait 1995, in Hayward Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: on Art and Motherhood 2024-25
“
Her earlier work was about motherhood, birth and the erotic, but now the female form becomes more pronounced in its ambiguity and ambivalence. I found myself asking whether, when laid bare, humanity supersedes gender and sexuality, or whether it defines it... portraits occasionally show themselves to present a different face. When the flesh is zipped up and clothed, the social persona makes its presence felt. We are now communing with persons who are not laid vulnerable but instead assert their identity. They are subjects in their own right and not merely the objects of our gaze. This shift in understanding reveals an intriguing dichotomy in her painterly idiom and also in the language of embodiment. For when we are naked, at rest, and opened up, we are at our most vulnerable. This is the site that Chuhan returns to repeatedly…
Rina Arya, extract from The Body in Disquiet in J Chuhan: Refuge, Gulab Publications 2022.
“