Mehja VS

Mehja V S is a visual artist from Kerala whose practice is grounded in painting and attentive to the emotional and sensory relationships between people, place, and memory. She completed her BFA from the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, in 2018, followed by an MFA from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, in 2020. Working primarily with oil and acrylic, Mehja’s practice engages landscapes not as sites of representation but as repositories of lived experience. Her paintings often emerge from ordinary, overlooked environments, where nature is transformed through memory rather than observed as a literal subject. These landscapes become internalized terrains—spaces where personal recollection intersects with collective experience. Through a delicate negotiation between figuration and abstraction, Mehja constructs contemplative visual fields that evoke intimacy, distance, and belonging. Drawing plays a foundational role in her process. She produces numerous spontaneous drawings prior to painting, allowing their immediacy and energy to guide the evolution of her canvases. Mehja has participated in exhibitions including the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Group Exhibition (2023) and Manorama Hortus, a group exhibition held at the Biennale Pavilion, Kozhikode (2024). Her work reflects a sustained inquiry into how memory inhabits landscape and how place, once internalized, continues to shape emotional and sensory perception.

Academics

MFA in Painting from Visva Bharati Central University, Santiniketan, West Bengal (2018-20)

BFA in Painting from College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala (2014-18).