# @drawingcenter on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/B0quHl7FLqx
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16044503-drawingcenter-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/2210b23c4c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2019-08-02T15:59:50.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Drawing Center (@drawingcenter) — https://gondola.cc/drawingcenter

## Caption

Artists have a variety of methods to make their mark. Every Friday we will share a photograph of an #ArtistInAction.
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Mequitta Ahuja (b. 1976) is an American artist who works primarily in self-portraiture to investigate the processes involved in identity formation. Ahuja’s canvases and works on paper reflect a creative synthesis of both an imagined and real self. Ahuja describes her work as “automythography” (an expansion on Audre Lorde’s biomythography) and explains it as a "combination of personal narrative with cultural and personal mythology." Ahuja uses her African-American and South Asian heritage in her paintings and works on paper by taking inspiration from Mughal manuscripts and Buddhist wall drawings, while also referencing the Western art history canon. "I'm thinking of the ground as a cultural space.” She explains, “Instead of starting with the plain page, I'm starting it with this layer of culture so that when I'm building my imagery, it's really a wrestle between the figure and the ground. In the end, there's this integrated, stitched together element between them. . . I'm interested in mixing those traditions: flatness of space, but also some perspectival space and depth into the surface. I think that's where we are in painting. I think we, as artists, now have free range to take what we want from history."
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#MequittaAhuja mequittaahuja 
Image: Courtesy of Bmore Art Magazine, 2018.

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## Tags

mequittaahuja, artistinaction

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