Her work primarily celebrates the cosmic feminine and its relationship to forces of creation and destruction. There is a focused engagement with the concept of Hiranayagarbha or The Golden Womb; she attempts to create new artistic identities by reshaping belongings, bringing the past and the present into a dialogue through a process of decay, hybridization and transformation.
Spanning over five decades of experiments in form and language, Kohli’s works live in multiple museums and institutional collections all over the world, including the British Museum (UK), MAP, Bangalore, India, Kiran Nadar Museum of Arts (India), Partition Museum, Birth Rites Collection (UK), Rubin Museum (USA, Phoenix Museum of Art (Arizona, USA) Bihar Museum(Patna), Bharat Bhavan, Lalit Kala Akademie (India) NGMA(Bangalore) to name a few.
Kohli’s several large–scale murals, are acquired by Supreme Court (New Delhi), Sardar Patel Bhawan (Patna, Bihar), Delhi and Mumbai International Airports, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldman Sech, Morgan Stanley and many more. Her works have also been shown at collateral events such as the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016), Venice Biennale of Art/Architecture (2015, 2016), ARCO (Madrid,2008), Art Basel, and at the India Art Fair (2010-2024), Asia Society HK, among many others. Kohli has also been an invited speaker at several conferences and institutions, including TEDx (2012), WIN Conference (2013-2015), NGMA (Bangalore, 2010, 2014, 2016), Harvard University, University of California at Davis, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut and the University of Buffalo to name a few.
In the quiet industrial landscape of Okhla, Seema Kohli’s studio exists as a deeply personal space of retreat and return. It is not open to the public; rather, it is a place she comes to — to work, to think, to sit with her canvases, and to allow ideas to unfold in their own time.
For Kohli, an experimental artist, poetry is a recorded conversation between her, the canvas, and the rendered image. Where they are all living conscious being worthy of responding with emotions and sensitivity. Though she has been performing to her poetry as narratives, in 2013 she self-published a compilation of verses, “I Am” which was performed at TEDx, Chennai. The second book “Experiencing The Goddesses” she is co-author and editor. She is already working on co-authoring the third book, and one which is a compilation of her own poetry written in the last 17 years.
A timeline tracing Seema Kohli’s artistic evolution from early explorations to expansive, immersive works, unfolding her ongoing inquiry into the feminine as a cosmic and regenerative force.
Foundational years of study and experimentation. Early engagement with the human figure and seeds of a lifelong inquiry into the feminine principle.
Development of a distinctive visual language. The female form expands into a symbolic and cosmic presence layered with intricate narratives.
Myth, multiplicity, and gold-infused surfaces define the work. The feminine becomes the universe, the womb becomes the cosmos. Growing recognition.
Movement beyond canvas into sculpture and installation. Larger scales, immersive works, and deeper philosophical engagement worldwide.
Ecological consciousness and interconnectedness come to the forefront. A continued meditative practice rooted in the feminine as origin and regenerative force.
In my memory, my paternal aunt or bua, was the one who introduced us to a lot of our own personal oral history about our...
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Breathe, I say to myself, approaching the studio, for breath can no longer be taken for granted, not any more, not when the oxygen has...
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This series of 64 etchings visualises the cosmic feminine energy (Shakti) as it emerges from the Hiranyagarbha, or golden womb, and continuously multiplies into countless...
Read“I a’m everywhere”
everything is in my womb, I expand in every thought
Every time I contract, The expansion is volcanic
Every time you believe I Am Not
I create a miracle
You all come from one single womb
Share the same single space
How can you despair that
I ride the mind
Holding it reins by its hair
I am a celebration
An exploration of sacred geometries through paint, sculpture and installation. Kohli renders the invisible visible, tracing cosmic patterns that have guided human consciousness across millennia. A meditative visual...
I empty myself to maya. Maya captivating me, surprising me by my own responses to her different forms and manifestations. The more I understand her, the more I...
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Seema Kohli Enter Stillness is a fable of two spaces inhabited, abandoned and dissolved. The work engages with the duality of the interior and the exterior, the forest...
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