Al-Qawi Tazal Nanavati Indian, b. 1995

Al-Qawi Tazal Nanvati completed her Bachelor’s from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. (2017). She has held a solo show at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and several group shows at Arc Gallery, Chicago (2018), ZhouB Art Center, Chicago (2018), Sullivan Galleries, Chicago (2017), Aaron Gallery, Glenview (2017), Woman Made Gallery, Chicago (2017), Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago (2016), Union Arts Club, Chicago (2017), and many more. She was selected for the ProjectArt Teaching Artists’ Residency, Chicago, U.S.A., and The Shop Art Shop Residency, Gunehar, Himachal Pradesh, India. She currently lives and works in Mumbai. Work from the series Bandagi (means prayer/meditation). These works are made in layers of 11, 33, and 99, symbolizing prayer beads/The Tasbih. The process involves 11-layer watercolor screen prints, edited and engraved onto wood, then blind embossed onto Fine Art paper, with color derived from sawdust. These works function as self-portraits through text or diary entries, hidden yet subtly revealed through decipherable words. The circular artwork uses the same embossing process on a crocheted piece made by my mother, who passed away last year; it was our last collaborative artwork.