Divya Mehra facts for kids

Divya Mehra (born 1981) is a talented Canadian artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She creates amazing art using many different forms. In 2022, she won the prestigious Sobey Art Award. This is a big honor for Canadian artists. The award is given out every year by the National Gallery of Canada.

Growing Up and Learning

Divya Mehra was born in Winnipeg, Canada. She was the second youngest of four children. She studied art at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. She earned her first art degree there in 2005. Later, she went to Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City. She earned her master's degree in visual arts in 2008.

What Divya Mehra Creates

Divya Mehra works with many different types of art. She makes sculptures, prints, drawings, and artist books. She also creates installations, advertisements, and performances. Her art includes videos and films too.

She often uses humor in her work. She combines serious research with popular culture. This includes things like comics and social media. She also shares her experiences as an artist from the Indian diaspora. Her art is meant to make people think, but also to be funny.

Cool Art Projects

Divya Mehra is well-known for her art that uses text. One of her first text-based works was Currently Fashionable. She made it in 2009. It was shown in her exhibition called You have to tell them, I'm not a Racist. This show first appeared in 2012 in St. Boniface, Manitoba. It was shown again in 2017 in Toronto. The text in her art appears in English, Hindi, and French.

In 2012, MTV, MoMA PS1, and Creative Time asked ten artists to create new Art Breaks. Art Breaks was a video series on MTV in the 1980s. Famous artists like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol showed their videos then. Divya Mehra was one of the artists chosen for the 2012 series.

In 2018, Divya Mehra designed the cover for Canadian Art Magazine. It was for their "Dirty Words" issue. For the cover, she rebuilt the set of a famous Canadian TV show. The show was called You Can't Do That On Television. She recreated a scene where a character gets covered in slime. This happened whenever they said "I don't know." That same magazine issue also featured her art. It explored the experiences of people from South Asia living outside their home country.

Divya Mehra was featured in a 2018 episode of the CBC Arts show In The Making. This show follows Canadian artists as they create their art. In her episode, Mehra traveled to India. She started working on a new inflatable artwork there. It was a bouncy castle shaped like the Taj Mahal. This bouncy castle was shown for the first time in an exhibition. The National Gallery of Canada later bought this artwork.

In 2023, Divya Mehra was asked to create two new inflatable artworks. These were for the Nuit Blanche Toronto art festival.

Art Shows

Divya Mehra's art has been shown in many places, including:

• Banff Centre
• Art Gallery of Ontario
• Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia
• Artspeak

Awards She Has Won

• Manitoba Arts Council, Major Arts Grant, 2014
• Glenfiddich Art Award, shortlist, 2015
• Sobey Art Award, shortlist, Prairies and the North region, 2017
• Wanda Koop Research Fund, 2020
• Sobey Art Award, winner, 2022