Pooja Iranna

Pooja Iranna’s keen perception of architectural space is one with many dualities. The fragility of her sculptural medium meets the solidity of her works on canvas; the notions of permanence and impermanence interact with her choices of medium as well as her execution. The artist’s view of the growing urban world and the almost tenuous delicacy of this outstripping growth is reflected in her sculptural works. The bricks meet the staple pins as a steadying element, but bring their own tenuous nature in their construction. Her sculptural works seen together become a see-through city, a chaos of expansion. In contrast, the canvas looms over the viewer, with the buildings receding into a distance without disappearing, their solid structures impenetrable and permanent. Together they create the incongruous yet true to life nature of urban growth. 

Pooja Iranna born in New Delhi in 1969, completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the College of Arts, New Delhi, in 1991, followed by a Master’s Degree in the same from the College of Arts, New Delhi, in 1995. In 1998–99, Iranna received a Junior Fellowship from the Department of Culture.  

Some of Iranna’s solo exhibitions are Silently Continuing…, AICON Gallery, New York, 2023; Silently: A Proposed Plan for Rethinking the Urban Fabric, AICON Gallery, New York, 2020; Contemplating the Urban, vasa-projects.com, 2019; In the Waves and Underneath, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2010; Of Human Endeavor, The Guild, Mumbai, 2009.

Her recent group shows include Archists I, DTale Archists, Bangalore, 2024; Rhizome: Tracing Ecocultural Identities, CSMVS, Mumbai, 2023; Past-Present-Continuous: 25 Years of The Guild, The Guild, at CCA Galleries, New Delhi, 2022; Erasure, curated by Gayatri Sinha, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, 2020; the Karachi Biennale, 2019; Burnish/Tarnish, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2019; The Urban Re-Imagined, curated by Ravi Agarwal, for the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2018; Negotiation in Contested Space, The Guild, Mumbai, 2018; The Eye and the Mind, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2016; Retina, at Rome Video Art Festival, MARCO Contemporary Art Museum of Rome, 2015; Working Space Around Memory and Perception, curated by Roobina Karode, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2015.  

Iranna has received the Charles Wallace India Trust Award in 2002, the Outstanding Women Achievers Award by YFLO in 2009. She was also a First 20 Finalist for the SCODA Prize in 2010 and 2011.

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