Return to the Mother - Jahnvi Singh Interview

On Sunday 30th June 2024, Home on Me (Sahara and Zehra) went on a little trip to a graduate show, a common ritual among co-founders to enjoy new art, and to gauge new talent. The two halves of Home on Me sometimes have differing opinions. But more often than not, we find ourselves walking into a room and being instantly drawn to similar pieces without a word leaving our mouths. Jahnvi Singh’s work in the Lethaby Gallery at Central Saint Martins, in the Post-grad CSM Fine Art show, was one of these instances.

Eager to learn more, we reached out and were delighted to find ourselves sitting with her on Tuesday 2nd July. Tucked under an outdoor umbrella in the summer drizzle, nursing mochas at Notes Café Kings Cross, we got to learn in depth about the work while its impact was still very fresh in our minds. 

Initially, her connection to art seems to be more one of absorption of the artistic region she grew up in and familial influence, but later on we noticed her ideas have a lot of historical and physiological elements. Jahnvi works a lot with ideas of maternal bonds, mythologisation and symbolism, particularly around various mentalities on the feminine and masculine. We were equally fortunate to learn how these tied into her personal life, be that yearning for a clear vision of her female ancestors who are nameless, or finding herself through artistic practice, but also needing to stand-up for it practically in this patriarchal world.

Jahnvi’s exploration of the feminine is as riveting and important as it is vast. Not only venturing into feminine love or feminine rage, her work encompasses all of the feelings in between and beyond, and the way they fit into our universe. 

Zehra: What's your earliest memory engaging in art and what made you want to pursue this career?

Jahnvi: My grandmother used to paint sarees chiffon sarees. I used to have a little table near her, and I used to get a handkerchief to paint. And then my dad was an artist as well, so sitting with him and drawing and painting. I just never got called to anything else. You know, this was just naturally the thing.

Zehra: That's so sweet! It's nice that it's family tradition, passed down. 

Sahara: Would you say it's also in your wider heritage? Rajasthan is famous for having a lot of arts and crafts, so would you say it was also around you?

Jahnvi: Definitely. So my parents are hoteliers, and they've always championed local artists and artwork. So we had this miniature artist in the hotel premises. So every time in between my hide and seek, I would just go into his workshop and then forget I'm playing a game. They have these traditional pigments, natural pigments, and like shells in which they keep there… I think, a consequence of the immediate environment. Also murals and our homes, something I grew up being around. The scale in my work is because I was a child and I was running around all of these walls with huge paintings on them. 

Jahnvi’s work shows a really unique blend of large scale figures combined with smaller detailed figures, almost as if combined with a love of miniature paintings and murals. Her use of coloured pencil can often allow for a lot of ease and freedom in this regard as well. 

Zehra: So do you have any process on a day where you make art? Do you have certain likes, habits and traditions? Or do you just, like, start immediately and feel like the ideas just come to you?

Jahnvi: Actually, it depends with each work. Sometimes I go over the whole process in my head before sleeping. ‘Yeah, tomorrow I'm gonna go and this is what I'm gonna do’, and it's normally just the first sort of outline. So for the work you saw in the gallery, the big face was like, ‘I'm just gonna go and draw that big face and see what happens the next day’. I just, like, cut the paper, put it up and do the face, and then I just sat in front of it for a bit, and it came to me. I directly work on it. It doesn't show, but I do a lot of pencils, rough work under what comes out in the end.

Zehra: Do you do any research? Do you look at other artists? Books? Movies?

Jahnvi:  I mean,  being on Instagram is like constant visual research. But a lot like psychology, things we assume about ourselves. My research is a lot about the imaginary and the symbolic. Like Freud, he took some mythology, so it's a long

it's a lot on the unconscious and how that plays into your actions and your thoughts consciously. He talks about the split from the feminine. He doesn't call it explicitly that. But he says that the first few infant years of your life are what he calls the imaginary, and then to live and be part of the world and to participate in it, you have to sort of split from that feminine and go into the world of the symbolic and the paternal. Then the rest of your life, especially according to Western philosophy, is a journey towards the father and God upwards, so there's no return to the mother. And then I looked at how we have goddess culture in India, And yet, how that doesn't really change the common grievances of female experience. So just that, what's the split and what's missing? and how our relationship with other women can nurture. Also the physical bodies and the limitations of it. 

We truly found ourselves needing to pause here for a while, so much to think about and process, and also giving us new ideas for how to create and write. I had never considered that the world is often thought of as inherently masculine and femininity is suppressed to the extent that we don’t really know it. We thus strongly applaud Jahnvi for delving into this unknown. 

Zehra:  Who's your biggest inspiration?

Jahnvi: All the women in my life.

Zehra: Do you feel like your personality has more female influence than male influence? 

Jahnvi: I wouldn't say so, no. But I think I'm just just being in this world, I've had to think a lot more about being a woman, yeah. You know, because it's such a masculine structure, even family wise, and especially in the way our histories are documented. I can name 14 great grandfathers, but their wives? no idea who they were. I don't even know what they look like. So, even the face that I use, that's just the way I imagined the women to be. So that absence was like I felt growing up, I just observed it, and then that became like a void I wanted to fill. 

Zehra: There's a book I’m reading [Women in the Picture: Women, Art and the Power of Looking by Catherine McCormack] about how females are portrayed in pieces of painting. If you go to the National Gallery, there are so many paintings of nude females, but there are only, like, maybe like 15 female artists that are actually in the National Gallery. And there's one painting of Venus, and her back is turned to you. She's the only female painting in a room full of men, and it almost looks like they're all looking at her, you know, in a sensual way. And if you look really closely at the painting, there are scars, because during the suffragette movement, a woman stabbed the Canvas as a revolt, saying, like. This is how you portray women, and we're not just bodies to be looked at.

Sahara: It reminds me of that Gorilla Girls campaign as well. Like, the main way women get into museums is by being naked. 

It seems there are so many ways to perceive portrayals of women. What’s interesting is both the presence and absence of women in art has been and continues to be contentious. 

Jahnvi: After one of my first open studios, I went away and then on the day I came back and this guy, my classmate, had put all of his rubbish and tables and chairs in my space. I've never been one to be concerned and I'm just like, ‘Okay’. And then one of my tutors was like 'you are a woman, you want to navigate the space for your entire career. There can be many men who are going to dump their stuff. You are going to go and ask him what's up, and tell him to remove it.' 

Sahara: A metaphor for life. 

Jahnvi: It was probably one of the most difficult things I've had to do, because it's just, you know, just asking for space. You wouldn't think that's so difficult.

Zehra too, cited a similar experience in her university studios. Even though both of their work takes up an ideological space in determined female self-expression, to take up physical space is a whole other battle tied to self-actualisation as a female artist. 

Zehra: A moment when you realised this is what you should do and can do?

Jahnvi: There wasn't a moment before I came here. I was just going with instinct. And then the first day, I was really struggling to just make art, because I was questioning why, before it even happened, ‘what will it mean? What will I do?’ So there was a hesitation, and I was not able to just get into the process. There was just hesitation. And then I think over my time here, I realised that the point of creation is creating, and then we can think about the rest later.

Janhvi’s articulate thinking and speaking was very clearly linkable to her art. I most certainly could see that in her work after she said this, and it is freeing just to hear, let alone to do. 

Zehra: A work of art that has impacted you?

Jahnvi: There's one from Mewar art, the painting of the Zenana, which is the female court. Yeah, it's the most violent depiction of  the zenana, because it's normally portrayed as very romantic, highly curated and sensual. But this one is, like, a group of women. I'll send it to And this, I think, I assume that. Someone has stolen something, one of the maids, and they are being beaten up. And there are onlookers, and they have these weird expressions on their faces, which you never expect. You know, it's like there is some kind of enjoyment looking at violence, and it's all within that female space, which I find very fascinating. but I haven't been able to find much written work about it, about it. 

Zehra: Who's your favourite artist?

Jahnvi: Nainsukh, from Kangra and probably Botticelli.

Zehra: What's the emotion that drives most of your work? like anger, sadness, joy, excitement?

Jahnvi: It's a mix of all of those things. I think, something that doesn't drive my work is doubt, which I've tried to overcome, or other emotions play into it depending on the.... there is enjoyment. Once you get into the process,  it's working, but it's sometimes really hard to get to that point, because things can change in a second. From good, it can suddenly become bad, and then from bad, it can suddenly become good. You start in the hope of getting that sense of fulfilment. 

Zehra: What do you envision yourself doing in five years?

Jahnvi: I envision the studio space back in India and working with local artists, just having consistent art practice.

Jahnvi had a beautiful decisiveness to her answers, whereas many would answer questions like the one above with a lot of points and sub-points. She seems to be okay with variety and change, as long as her practice is maintained. She clearly thinks long and intensely about the psyches and societal structures that make up our lives and the self, but also has clarity despite the chaotic nature of these things, using her art to navigate the questions. My favourite succinct response of hers was also the one to conclude the interview.

Zehra: Okay, anything you'd like to say to your past self?

Jahnvi: Don't be afraid.

You can find Jahnvi at @jahnveee on instagram. You can purchase her works through Home on Me Collective. DM or email us for more details. Or check out our shop page!