bio

Shyam Nasira Persaud (pronounced sharm nas-eer-rah puh-sard) is an 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 in relation to the outer world, to try and understand her connection to it on personal and social levels. Drawing on the Hermetic aphorism as above, so below, outer events are perceived as inextricably linked to inner ones, most often outside the sphere of conscious awareness.

With a focus on intergenerational disconnection and trauma (familial; societal; planetary), depth psychologies that foreground the unconscious, such as Jungian psychology, alongside philosophies like Yoga that view the world as intelligent and interconnected, serve as lenses, whilst colonialism, capitalism and technology serve as frameworks.

Shyam is as interested in transformative possibilities for healing and repair as she is in identifying sources and causes of fracture and harm.

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

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

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; 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 creative dream and led up to the death of the artist’s father.

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EDUCATION

BA (Hons) Fine Art Sculpture, University of the Arts London

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)