bio

Shyam Nasira Persaud (pronounced sharm nas-eer-rah puh-sard) is a visual artist and producer.

She was born in London, UK, where she lives and works.

artist statement

Shyam explores the psyche (meaning ‘soul’); she examines her inner world, to try and understand her subjective reality and connection to the outer world, including those who inhabit it.

Depth psychologies like psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology, which foreground the unconscious, alongside philosophies like Yoga, which view the individual as in embedded relationship with an intelligent, interconnected world, serve as lenses, whilst capitalism, colonialism, technology and intergenerationally-transmitted trauma serve as frameworks.

Of particular interest are the tensions between the slower, circular, ethereal quality of the embodied psyche, and fast-paced, linear, rational orientation to the material world characterising modern human progress.

Echoing the Hermetic aphorism as above, so below, outer social and individual events are perceived as inextricably linked to inner climates, most actively outside the sphere of conscious awareness.

Shyam experiences her practice as a crucible for exchange, experimentation, learning and growth, an alchemical space, in which artist and artwork form one another.

She employs research alongside inner practices that include meditation, active imagination and dream analysis. She works across a range of media that include painting, participation and writing.

Previous works include: refurbishing a nursery and painting a mural, in collaboration with inmates in a mixed Peruvian prison, for the toddlers who live there; translating imagined doctors’ letters into recordings of bluegrass country songs; the live performance by opera singers of sung sorrows written by the artist; a 3D surround-sound installation of a prayer, written and sung by the artist as a 7-part motet; an eight-month long ritual of writing quotes on an unused NHS clinical trials whiteboard, enlisted as a portal to the collective unconscious, which prompted a staff member to resign in pursuit of their lifelong creative dream and led up to the death of the artist’s father.

cv

EDUCATION

2005-2009: BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London

2004-2005: BTEC Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, University of the Arts London

OTHER EDUCATION

MSc Counselling Studies (distinction), The University of Edinburgh

BSc (Hons) Medical Physiology, The University of Manchester

EXHIBITIONS

2008: Degree Show (group exhibition), Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London

2008: The Nothing and the Nothingness – a Happening by Matthew Lee Knowles, Louise T. Blouin Institute, London

2007: There Will Never Be Another Time (group exhibition), Aida Street Gallery, London

2007: Park 07 (group exhibition), Cannizaro Park, London

2007: Knitting Circle (collaborative exhibition), South Wimbledon Underground station, London

CURATION

2007: Half Seen (group exhibition), La Viande Gallery, London. Sponsored by J. Lindberg.

COMMISSIONS

2007: Knitting Circle, South Wimbledon tube station, London, UK, commissioned by Art on the Underground (formerly Platform for Art) - lead on collaborative project between Wimbledon College of Art students and Morden Women's Institute.

RESIDENCIES

October 2010 - January 2011: Yanamilla Prison, Ayacucho, Peru (self-directed)