B. 1964

B.F.A., Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, 1986

The ‘self’ is at the center of Anju’s works, though she initially resisted the lure of self-portraiture. Her art remains rooted in the figurative and all elements within her paintings are charged with an emotional value. Anju has created a niche for herself while exploring various possibilities within it.

Anju’s self keeps recurring in the changing pictorial contexts. These are, on one hand, inward looking investigations but they are not narcissist in any sense. There is a keen sense of self-awareness and introspection, and at the same time these works compel the viewer to unravel the untold stories and ambiguous frames. She continually creates her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography.

Her watercolours are her take on the heroic, romantic representation of the self and self-discovery. There is something vulnerable in her works as stringent violence is inflicted on her mind and her art, for example, the dagger piercing the heart, women in despair, swords pointing towards figures present in the painting, and so on. Anju’s paintings start a process of moving beyond the narrow self and towards a larger self..

Nancy Adajania, an art critic and cultural theorist observes, "I will therefore argue that the artist’s various self projections, far from being a garland of whimsical and disconnected pictorial quotations phrased across the years, can actually be seen to express strong psychological continuities. Her allegorical narratives represent the inherent theatricality. There are curtains, props, costumes and even the spotlights - the entire stagecraft transforming the surfaces into a proscenium that mediates between the real and the illusory. Her works lie between the real and the unreal, dream and reality where she selects her pictorial references from varied sources including Indian miniatures, Renaissance paintings, world cinema, Ukiyo-e prints, newspaper photographs."

Anju Dodiya is considered among the most important contemporary artists in India. She has been exhibited in major galleries in India and abroad and was selected to show at the prestigious Venice Bienalle in 2009.

She lives and works in Mumbai.