The artist Mequitta Ahuja was born in 1976 to an African American mother and an Indian father in Grand Rapids. She earned a BA in 1998 from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and an MFA in 2003 from the University of Illinois in 2003, where she was mentored by the painter Kerry James Marshall. Ahuja describes her early “automythographical” works as “not just something sort of natural to you or that you were born with but that you were involved in your own process of becoming . . . a combination of nature and culture and place and your own creative imagination. [1] She adapted the term from the womanist scholar and activist Audre Lorde, who used the term “biomythography” to describe what is essentially a speculative biography. Automythography points the lens inward to provide a speculative biography of one’s self. Reflecting on her art making, Ahuja explains,
Ahuja is a founding program designer and director of the Blue Sky Project, an artist residency based in Dayton, Ohio, where artists work with local teenagers to create contemporary art. She has also lived in Houston, New York, and Baltimore, and currently resides in Weston, Connecticut.
PMA Collection
Notes
[1] Ahuja quoted in Reed 2021.
[2] Ahuja n.d.
References
Ahuja, Mequitta. n.d. Artist’s website. Accessed January 18, 2022. http://www.mequittaahuja.com/biography.html.
Brooklyn Museum. n.d. “Mequitta Ahuja.” Accessed January 18, 2018. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/about/feminist_art_base/mequitta-ahuja.
Crawford, Romi. 2012. “Mequitta Ahuja: Afrogalaxy.” In Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons. Edited by Therese Quinn, John Ploof, and Lisa Hochtritt. New York: Routledge.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. n.d. “Mequitta Ahuja.” Accessed January 18, 2022. https://www.pafa.org/museum/collection/item/real-allegory-her-studio.
Reed, Jo, host. “Mequitta Ahuja.” National Endowment for the Arts Podcast (podcast). May 6, 2021. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://www.arts.gov/stories/podcast/mequitta-ahuja.
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