PROJECT DEVELOPMENT REUBEN SINHA
2021/2022 PROJECT DEVELOPMENT ARTIST REUBEN SINHA
Art Lives Here started working with Harlem based artist Reuben Sinha in the fall of 2021. Sinha’s first public art installation titled Breathing Without Fear was installed in October 2022 and was on view in Marcus Garvey Park through September 2023. We want to thank Harlem Needle Arts and NYC Parks for collaborating with ALH and the artist to bring Breathing Without Fear to live temporarily on the lawn adjacent to the drummers circle in Marcus Garvey Park.
2021/2022 Project Development Artist Reuben Sinha
Reuben Sinha is an encaustic painter and sculptor working in ceramics, his work is centered around the theme of traversing boundaries, and reconciling cultures found and cultures lost. His paintings start with raw materials: wood panels cut from prefabricated doors, beeswax from local farms, damar crystals and basic color pigments. In natural light, the paintings have a translucency created by pigments suspended in beeswax, alluding to personal reflection. The overall effect is layered and sensuous.
In response to mass disenfranchisement under the Trump administration and growing xenophobia against brown skin the artist began a series of brown encaustic color studies to explore the limits of a single color’s expression. To some, brown is beautiful. To others, it is dirty; the outsider, the enemy. These paintings mirror the skin tones of the NYC public school students the artist taught for 15 years.
His ceramics are hand built sculptures, abstract figures and vessels that are inspired by traditional we need to expand this. Sinha’s family immigrated to the US from India when he was 8 years old, and he has lived in NYC ever since. After receiving a BFA from NYU, Sinha studied art at the Art Students League of New York, and Columbia University. His awards include the Mac Dowell Traveling Scholarship and a Fulbright Fellowship amongst others.
He recently retired from teaching in the NYC public school system to dedicate his career to being a full time artist. Along with teaching art in high schools in East Harlem and the Bronx, Sinha taught drawing and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and Spring Studio. His work is in private and public collections in the UK, India, Russia, Japan, Germany and the United States, including Columbia University, and the Fulbright House, New Delhi. Sinha currently lives and works in Harlem, New York.
