Jai Chuhan Small Paintings

Small Paintings presents the gestural, intimate and hauntingly beautiful paintings by Indian-born British artist Jai Chuhan. The book showcases the art created for her solo exhibition of the same name at Qrystal Partners in London in the summer of 2023.

Chuhan often paints lonely figures in indistinct, nebulous rooms in works that explore love and alienation. They evoke psychological tensions between genders, agency and subjection, the familiar and the unreal. Her practice engages deeply with histories of painting as she navigates transculturalism and the female gaze. Chuhan emigrated to London with her family in the late 1960s, where she later studied at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Donald Ryan, co-founder of Qrystal Partners, contributes a foreward contextualising the exhibition and delineating Chuhan’s key artistic concerns. In her essay, Hannah Marsh, assistant curator of Contemporary British Art at the Tate, ruminates on the idea of being seen, holding space and how Chuhan’s art speaks on its own terms.

Jai Chuhan is an Indian-born British artist. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally in Italy, Belgium, Singapore and America and in the UK at Tate Liverpool; Barbican, London; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Ikon, Birmingham; Tramway, Glasgow; Arnolfini, Bristol; Commonwealth Institute, London; Horizon Gallery, London; Watermans Arts Centre, London and Pitzhanger, London. Solo exhibitions include Small Paintings, Qrystal Partners, London (2023); Remodel: Painting Studio, Asia Triennial, Manchester (2018); Decanting Desire, Liverpool Biennial (2014) and J Chuhan: Recent Paintings, Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool (2013). Her paintings and drawings are in the collections of the Tate, the Arts Council Collection and Cartwright Hall in Bradford.