Neha Dey

Neha’s practice is rooted in memory—understood not as a fixed recollection but as a living, shifting presence that leaves behind emotional imprints. She explores how memory stains, folds, fades, and returns, shaping how we  experience ourselves and the spaces we inhabit.  

Materiality lies at the heart of her process. She works with fragile and intimate materials like handmade paper,  fabric, threads, and found fragments. These are chosen not only for their texture or visual appeal, but for their  capacity to hold touch, silence, and emotional residue. Fabric, in particular, becomes an extension of the  body—soft, familiar, and memory soaked. She stitches, folds, and layers these materials to build forms that carry quiet  gestures and emotional weight. Rather than using conventional flat canvases, she often shapes her surfaces to  resemble garments—dresses, frocks, pajamas, skirts. These forms evoke a bodily presence and open portals to  childhood memories and fantasies. Within these shaped surfaces, she paints children, animals, plants, and hybrid  creatures—inhabiting dreamlike environments where the personal blends with the atmospheric. She sees the forms  and shapes in her work as emotional containers. They are not just visual decisions, but responses to the feeling  or memory she is trying to hold. Soft curves, suspended folds, fragile edges, or even wing-like extensions often  echo tenderness, distance, or longing. The shape becomes a silent language—sometimes sheltering, sometimes  expanding.  

Neha’s installations are site-responsive and immersive. Works are often hung, draped, or suspended in space,  creating shared environments that invite viewers to move around and within them. These spatial compositions  echo emotional landscapes—fragile yet grounded, soft yet resonant. The act of touch, both literal and  conceptual, is central to her work. It guides her process and becomes a way of communicating memory and  care without words. She sees her practice as a space where the ephemeral is given form, and where silence, softness,  and vulnerability can become powerful tools of storytelling. Memory, for Neha, is not something distant—it is  something tactile, alive, and always in process.