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 foreword 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.