Quirky exotic imageries mock at the good old world charm of the surreal colonial era in Piyali Ghosh’s works.

Being born and reared in Kolkata, she confronted with the city’s colonial heritage either through its cultural environ or through a sense of distant kinship. In Bengal the cynical ambience of the sort of decadent administrative culture/landed gentry is still omnipresent. The anomalies of their pompous lifestyle and their queer way of masquerading lofty power provoke her images.

Promising artist Piyali Ghosh did her Bachelor’s in Visual Arts (painting) from Kolkata’s Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship, in 2006. She then secured her Master’s degree (Fine Arts - painting) from the M. S. University, Baroda.

Piyali Ghosh staged her first solo at Mumbai based gallery Chatterjee and Lal, in 2007. The artist has also featured in a number of significant group shows comprising ‘Trends and Trivia’ in Hong Kong courtesy Art Konsult, Delhi, and Mon Art, Kolkata, in 2008; a 2008group show at the Lalit Kala Academy, Kozhikode, ‘Pulsating Rhythms on Paper’ courtesy Tangerine Art Space held in 2007at Alliance Francaise, Bangalore; ‘Return of the Surreal’ at Chitrakala Parisath, Bangalore, again by Tangerine Art Space (2007); and a show at Art World, Chennai in 2007.

Summing up the subject of her works, she says: “We often forget the difference between need and greed. When our needs are fulfilled, we hanker for more; that turns into greed.” Along with those mystic, mythic animals, the artist often shows self- portraits. As the artist has explained in an interview, this signifies imagining of oneself in the very situation in which the protagonists of the painting are placed.