Appendix_2016 - 2017
Medium : Pen, Watercolor, Graphite pencil on Paper, Size : 8” X 6.5”.
Intervention in anatomy Book. These becomes the documentation of the actions.
ACTION NO. 8_(BRIDGE)
Duration: 6 Hours, A dimension of Documentation: 11823 Images, 2016.
Instruction: I will stand in the middle of the bridge, I will not move…while standing
Duration: normal routine working hours (around 5.30 to 6 hours)
Mohit Shelare is an artist based between Delhi and Amravati, India. His practice explores impurity, contamination, and waste as conditions through which social, political, and material worlds are organized. Trained as a painter and performer, he works across drawing, performance, moving image, sculpture, sound, and text, creating conversational fields where personal experience, political structures, and material processes intersect. His work attends to the lives, relations, and forms of knowledge that emerge within infrastructural leftovers, systems of disposal, and social exclusion. Through these inquiries, Shelare investigates how waste circulates through bodies, institutions, language, and environments. Rather than approaching contamination as a condition to be removed, he considers it a generative space through which new relations, experiences, and ways of knowing become possible.
Central to his practice is how impurity unsettles established categories and reveals forms of life that exceed systems of order. By engaging contamination not simply as a problem but as a mode of relation, Shelare's work proposes impurity as a site from which the world is experienced, recognized, and rewrite differently.
Shelare has exhibited 59th International Carnegie (Pittsburgh, USA), Padiglione D'arte Contemporanea (Milan, Italy), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, Lebanon), Conflictorium (Ahmedabad, India), Kunst(Zeug)Haus (Switzerland) and FICA (Delhi, India). He has received grants, residencies and awards from the Prince Claus Seed Award (Netherlands), Delfina Foundation (UK), Inlaks Fine Art Award (India) and Regional Art Assembly (Australia).
Education
2018-19 Home Workspace Program, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon.
2015-17 MFA, Shiv Nadar University, Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, India.
2010-14 BFA, Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, India.
2007-08 Foundation in Art, Shivaji Chitrakala Mahavidyalaya, Amravati, Maharashtra, India.
Solo Exhibition
2025 "DRAWING NEAR"
Chemold Prescott Road, Mumbai, India.
Exhibitions
2026 "IF THE WORD WE" 59th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA.
2025 "INDIA. Of Glimmers and Getaways" PAC - Padiglione D'arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy.
2025 "On Absence" Shiva Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA.
2024 Intimacy with Waste, Conflictorium, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
2023 Tenderly Towards a Tipping Point, Watermans Art Centre, London, UK.
2023 Chemoulding, FRAMING FUTURE ARCHIVES, Chemould Gallery, Mumbai, India.
2023 Insoluble Substance and Separate Existence, FICA, Delhi, India.
2023 MOVE, STAY OR DISAPPEAR, CAMP studio, Mumbai, India.
2022 Dust Sculpting Vacuum, Open Studio, Jangpura, Delhi, India.
2022 Image Syndrome, Open Studio, Jangpura, Delhi, India.
2020 Perpetual Postponement, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon.
2020 abr_circle Instagram network of performances/digital works.
2019 Open Studio, Home Workspace Program, Ashkal Alwan, Lebanon.
2018 “The breath after crossing the yellow line” A066, Kaladham, Greater NOIDA, India.
2017 “Distant Mirrors” Fabrik, Kultur Im Zentrum Von, Switzerland.
2016 “Prognosis of the internally combusting Mother” Student’s Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India.
2016 “Chapter 1” Coming Together, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India. 2015 “Double Object”, Kunst (Zeug) Haus, Switzerland.
2013 Head to Head, Coomaraswamy Gallery, Prince of Whales Museum, Mumbai, India.
2013 Bombay Art Society, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, India.
Press, Articles and Reviews
2025 Brushing up on Dissend by Jane Borges
2025 REMAINS TO BE SEEN By Rahee Punyashloka
2024 Studio Visit: Artist of CONTAMINATION by Kabir Jhala
Art Residencies and Fellowship Programs
2025 Casa degli Artisti, Milan, Italy.
2024 Delfina Foundation, London, UK.
2024 Conflictorium Museum, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
2023 Inlaks Fine Art Residency with CAMP studio, Mumbai, India.
2023 FICA, in/cube, the residency at Project_Space, Delhi, India.
2021 Regional Art Assembly, Australia.
2019 Ashkal Alwan, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Home Workspace Program, Beirut, Lebanon.
2015 Stiftung FUTUR:Herzlich willkommen, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland.
Artist Grants and Awards
2025 TAF Emerging Artist Award South Asia, London, UK.
2023 Inlaks Fine Art Award, India.
2022 Prince Claus Seed Awards, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2021 Art Practice 2021 onwards, Exploration, IFA Bangalore, India.
2021 The Emerging Artist Award Extended Support Platform, Delhi, India.
2020 Generator Cooperative Art Production Fund, Experimenter, Kolkata, India.
2014 Bronze Medal (Drawing & Painting, SJJSA) Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, India.
2014 Award for Best Student in Portraiture, Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, India.
2013 Master Dinanath Mangeshkar Memorial Award, Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, India.
Artist Talk, Lecture-Performances, and Symposiums
2026 Support Systems, Symposium | 50 Years of Inlaks, Delhi, India.
2025 AFTERWASTE, panel conversation, Chemold Prescott Road, Mumbai, India.
2024 Amidst owls, torpedoes and serpents, colloquium, HECK, IIC, Delhi, India.
2024 Artist Spaces Webinar, Speaker - Michelle Wong, Historian, writer, and curator based in Hong Kong
2024 Intersecting Intentions: Funding, Fundraising, and The Life of a Culture Producer.
2023 Modulating Realities: Networks of Sonic Thinking. Capture All, Delhi, India.
2023 Curve in Desire, Chemold Gallery, Mumbai, India.
2023 Shared Ecology, artist talk/presentation, India International Centre, India.
2023 Inlaks Fine Art Award -PRESENTATION- Mahakalshmi, Mumbai, India.
2023 To Inhabit, With Care "contaminate association and floating existence" School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai, India
2023 Insoluble Substance and Separate Existence, Lecture-Performance, FICA, Delhi, India.
2023 XENO KNOWING, Lecture-Performance, FICA, Delhi, India.
2022 Conversation with Assembly, Regional Art Assembly, Australia.
2022 Staging the contemporary: The next generation PANEL 5: Artistic Practice: Sites and Infrastructures
2021 Artist Talk, Alumni talk, Shiv Nadar University, India.
2020: Artist Talk, National Institute of Design, Haryana, India.
2020 Artist Talk, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bengaluru, India.
2019 Artist Talk, Centre of Art and Free Expression, Jamiy Nagar, Delhi, India.
Screening
2024 Emami Art Experimental Film Festival, Kolkata, India.
2023 Toxic Substance and Immediate Existence, CAMP studio, Mumbai, India.
2020 Perpetual Postponement, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon.
Educator and Research Work
2019-24 Visiting Faculty - National Institute of Design, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India.
2025 “Thought and its Outside” workshop at KALABHAVAN, Shantineketan, part of the student biennale.
2022 Visiting Faculty - Monsoon Electives at the School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai, India.
2021 Assistant Researcher - Locating and Sampling Jewish Sites and Archival Records related to Mumbai Jews,
1796-2021 Principal Investigator: Dr Menashe Anzi, “Jewish Networks and Diaspora between the Indian
Ocean and the Red Sea in Modern Times (16th-20th centuries)”
2021-22 Assistant Professor - Hindustan University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
2020-21 Visiting Faculty - Chitkara University, Punjab, India.
2020-21 Guest Faculty - Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore, India.
2019 Project Assistant - “Equality and Emptiness” exhibition curated by S Anand, Devi Art Foundation, Delhi.
2017-18 Art Educator - Art and Design Department, Delhi Public School, Pune, India.
