Drawing is at the centre of Amba Sayal-Bennett’s practice, expanding across works on paper, projections and sculptural installations. This artist’s room includes works spanning the last eight years of the artist’s practice that critically engage with the socio-political contexts of architectural heritage and modernist ideologies and aesthetics. Amba is particularly interested in the nature of abstraction, using technology in the form of language, tools, methods and materiality to stage relations and engagement between human and non-human.
Within her work, Amba critiques the tendency of colonial practices to decontextualise and appropriate. She traces the migration of architectural forms across continents, such as to Chandigarh in Punjab, the birthplace of her maternal grandparents, and where Le Corbusier’s purpose-built city examines the failings of modernism in post-colonial contexts. She explores modernism’s rejection of ornamentalism as well as her interest in sci-fi aesthetics, a genre which has long been criticised for its colonial overtones.
Figurative representations are absent within Amba’s work, however, the presence of the body is felt through her physical interaction with the materials and technological mechanisms she uses. She explores the active role of these materials and tools, considering them not as passive elements but as entities with agency.
Amba’s practice explores the intersections between socio-political histories, materiality and technology encouraging viewers to reconsider the nature of abstraction and the complex relationships between past, present and future.
