Swapna Namboodiri spent 6 years as a software program engineer at Infosys. After workplace hours, she painted. She made issues. The inventive apply wasn’t ready within the wings – it was already operating parallel, each night, for the whole length of her engineering profession.
The formal swap got here later – when her daughter arrived and the job stopped making sense. Even then, she didn’t go away with a plan. She simply stopped, and the artwork that had at all times been there expanded to fill the area.
From Bangalore to Doha to Adelaide, Swapna has constructed a apply that resists simple categorisation. She paints. She creates sculptural wall items. She works with upcycled single-use plastic. She makes wearable artwork that finally ends up on a 20-foot ramp on the Australian Wearable Artwork showcase on the Sunshine Coast. She does all of this with out formal coaching and with out gallery illustration – and he or she’s been promoting internationally since 2017.
What’s value noting in regards to the plastic work: she was utilizing single-use plastic as a cloth lengthy earlier than sustainability grew to become a framework folks utilized to artwork. The apply got here first. The language caught up later.
The readability of function is what ultimately led to a fee from Financial institution Australia and Parley for Oceans – a large-scale set up launched at Martin Place, Sydney, marking the discharge of a financial institution card constructed from ocean-collected plastic. Swapna arrived in Adelaide in December 2023. She had that fee inside her first 12 months.
Her wearable artwork piece Amphitrite, a finalist at Australian Wearable Artwork on the Sunshine Coast, drew on coral bleaching, Greek mythology, and the Theyyam artwork type from Kerala – practiced in her personal ancestral household. When she noticed the completed piece on the mannequin beneath stage lighting, she was in tears. It seemed like Theyyam come to life.
She constructed 136K Instagram followers on uncooked studio footage and real course of documentation. No styling. No posing with the work. Simply the work, proven truthfully, over years. She discovered Artwork Finder by means of Instagram, registered with out understanding tips on how to put collectively a CV, and began delivery work to the UK and the US from Doha – at a time when no person else in Qatar was doing it.
Adelaide has taken to her rapidly. Brighton Metropolis Environmental Consciousness Award winner. Burnside Surroundings Awards runner-up. Characteristic artist with Burnside Council. First 18 months.
What’s constant throughout the entire story is that Swapna didn’t look forward to the best situations. She began making issues in each metropolis she landed in, discovered the sensible issues as they got here, and saved going.
Swapna Namboodiri Web site: https://www.swapnanamboodiri.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swapna_namboodiri/
Fb: https://www.fb.com/swapna.namboodiri.3/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/artjourneywithswapnanamboodiri
Naina Web site: https://www.naina.co
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naina
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nainaredhu
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/present/5HwVipVYnxARyEjp4onfvp
Watch & hearken to the total episode on YouTube & Spotify.
