Moments of Rest and Radicalness

In today’s productivity-driven world, leisure is a luxury as well as an act of resistance. Shailee Mehta’s exhibition Chants from the Hollow at Chemould CoLab delves into the meditation of the female body in kinship with nature, highlighting the radical power of rest and reflection. For Shailee, painting and drawing become acts of resistance and discovery—ways to find stillness and tenderness in a world that often dismisses them. Through her work, she invites viewers to witness the quiet, profound moments of care and curiosity, exploring the intimate relationships between the body, nature, and the environment.

What was it about leisure that you found so radical or wild? 
Leisure and rest become radical in a world that fails to accommodate acts of observing and reflecting. A lot of the images in this show propose a way of looking through the lens of curiosity for a stillness. They present narratives of care and tenderness performed by the female body. I suppose in a way they’re also reiterating the importance of intention in the smallest of gestures, whether that is in delicately handling a crab or looking over a wall.

The scene includes animals such as a cat, birds, and a crab. How would you depict the relationship between leisure and nature through their interactions?
I think my surrounding ecologies, from the balcony to the street to hinterlands to the valleys, have been the biggest contributors to what I am presenting in this show. My personal interactions with the creatures found in these places have allowed me to access a language of the animalistic. For example, “The Joy of your Return” is a painting of a kite who I noticed would show up on the same exact spot every time it poured in Colaba. For me, this is as much a language of femininity as my other figurative works. In other paintings, one can see the human skin painted as the exoskeleton of the crab or the melanin of the skin transforming into the redness or orangness of the soil. These formal decisions indicate a sort of mythological evolution of the human form which I quite enjoy rendering.

Tell me about your creative process, what went into the making of this exhibition?
I actually made these works across three cities—Goa, Mumbai and Baroda. It was wonderful to be able to make space for such dynamism through the year! A large chunk of it was made during the Summer Residency at Chemould Colab which was such an enriching experience for me. I could really explore both my mediums of choice—painting and drawing, equally. 

Being in the studio is a significant part of my practice. I especially resonate with the way William Kentridge refers to the act of working in the studio, where there is space for productive procrastination, the walking from one corner to another as a metaphor from walking from one idea to another.

We have also introduced text as an integrated part of this show, as I feel I have always enjoyed poetry and music as a corollary to my work. 

What draws you to the human form, and what is it about depicting it in its nudity that interests you??
The body is as much an activated landscape in my work as the context it inhabits. For me, it is a site of resilience and wonder. The way it ruptures, scabs, sheds, bleeds, bruises, produces—imitating the trees and lands that it continues to interact with. It is important for me to present the body in the same way I would present a tree or a free-hand drawn line—bare, asymmetrical and gestural.

Why did you name the exhibition Chants from the Hollow?
The titles stems from the coming together of two ideas—the notion of rituals and the spaces that hold them. Many gestures portrayed in these pieces are suggestive of a repetitive acts (such as a chant itself), self-assured rituals such as walking, carrying, holding and leaning. They are also referring to spaces that are hollows—rooms, bellies, palms and wounds. The images feel like they’re gentle calls to look and look again. The call seems to come from an unknown place which one can only hear but not necessarily tangibly feel. Hence, Chants from the Hollow.

?It’s your first debut solo in India, what do you hope viewers would take away from the exhibition?
I hope people leave with a reignited sense of curiosity that looks at nature not simply as something we need to overcome and own, but something to revere and learn from. I also hope they can the recognise the expansiveness one might just find in their everyday acts of care by finding the feminine within.


Words Paridhi Badgotri
Date 06.12.2025