Lallitha Jawahirilal at the Matri Sadan Ashram Ganga Ghat, south Haridwar, India in 2019. Image courtesy of the artist
Lallitha Jawahirilal (b. 1955, Ladysmith) is a South African visual artist, who enrolled at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London in 1984 and graduated with a BA Degree in 1987. She continued to study at the Royal College of Art London where she graduated with an MA degree in 1989. She collaborated with South African exile writers, musicians, sculptors, painters and photographers in the UK and engaged in fundraising efforts for to support the anti-apartheid movement, and participated in group exhibitions, including the ‘Artists Against Apartheid’ exhibition in the Upper Street Gallery. She held solo exhibitions at the Africa Centre in Stockholm, Gallery 21 in Johannesburg and the Galerie Trapez in Berlin. In 1990, she was awarded a residency by the Delfina Studios Trust in London. Jawahirilal won the Discerning Eye Award in 1991 and the Pollack Krasner Award in 1992.
Her work deals with space as a deeply embedded construct in one’s psyche during exile. Jawahirilal fled apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and went into self-imposed exile in London where she then took up her art studies, continuously engaging her contradictory feelings towards her home country (and especially her home town of Ladysmith) which wavers between deep loving emotion, on-going conflict and in some senses, a feeling of spiritual entanglement with her place of birth. Using her own poetry and mixed media (painting and collage), Jawahirilal’s Oh South Africa(1980, 2011) series reflects her longing for her home during her time away in London, but also since 2004 when she took up permanent residence in India.
Career
Fine Art Lecturer at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa (1994-2000)
Master Degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London (1989)
Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London (1987)
Selected Awards
1994 Elizabeth Foundation Award, United States of America [view pdf here]
1992 Pollock Krasner Award, United States of America [view pdf here]
1991 Discerning Eye Award, Mall Galleries, London
1989-90 African Education Trust Award, London
CREATIVE DIALOGUE
VIDEO: Art on Mind Creative Dialogue with Lallitha Jawahirilal on 10 October 2019 at The Point of Order Project Space, Wits School of the Arts, Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa (sponsored by the NRF Thutuka Fund and Wits University).
AUDIO: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Lallitha Jawahirilal
TRANSCRIPT: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Lallitha Jawahirilal
TRANSCRIPT: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Lallitha Jawahirilal
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES: Lallitha Jawahirilal
WORKS by Lallitha Jawahirilal
WORKS
EXHIBITIONS
PROJECTS AND RESEARCH
CATALOGUES, PRESS AND REVIEWS on Lallitha Jawahirilal
PUBLICATIONS
INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Artist CV
[pdf here]
Artist profile:
Ben Uri Research Unit